Top 10 Greatest Russian Novels

[Florestan]

My picks, in (Latin) alphabetical order.

Bulgakov - The White Guard
Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Gogol - Dead Souls
Goncharov - Oblomov
Grossman - Life and Fate
Melnikov-Pechersky - In the Forests & On The Hills
Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago
Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward
Tolstoy - War and Peace
Turgenev - Fathers and Sons

[Jo498]

Dostoevsky:
The Brothers Karamazov (it is actually too sprawling, the "Idiot" and C & P are more tightly organized, but despite some flaws the parable of the Grand Inquisitor alone would be worth the price of admission)
The Idiot
Crime and Punishment
The Demons
The Gambler

Tolstoy: War and Peace

Bulgakov: Master and Margarita


To my shame I never finished "Anna Karenina"... (partly/mainlybecause of the endless and soppy Kitty and Levin subplot), read, but did not much care for "Resurrection", neither for "Dead Souls", never got more than a few pages into Turgenev (although I must have a copy of Fathers and Sons somewhere) and only know the Zhivago Movie...

[Cato]

I find Alexander Solzhenitsyn's best work to be the "literary experiment" The GULAG Archipelago.  Highly recommended!  I recall reading it when it first came out, and liked it much better than the straight novels.

[bwv 1080]

Dont think I have read 10 Russian novels, but Life & Fate and Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 are on the list.  In general, I have tried but cant really stomach novels about 19th century Europeans

Not written by a Russian, but William Vollman's Europe Central is another good novel about the USSR during WW2

[vandermolen]

Dostoevsky: 'Crime and Punishment' (in a class of its own as far as I'm concerned)
Tolstoy: 'War and Peace'
Goncharov: 'Oblomov'

[Cato]

and only know the Zhivago Movie...

I was highly disappointed by the novel: I find that the movie works on a more subtle level, with the Zhivago character being much more interesting in the movie, because he is very torn and ambiguous about his double love: in the novel "not so much" as they say these days.

[Spineur]

In addition to the authors mentioned, I would add



and this musically related novel

[vandermolen]

Also:

Solzhenitsyn: 'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'.

[Florestan]

I find Alexander Solzhenitsyn's best work to be the "literary experiment" The GULAG Archipelago.  Highly recommended! 

Heartily agreed, a monument. Only it's not a novel.

cant really stomach novels about 19th century Europeans

Iow, you can't stomach some of the greatest novels ever written. What is it about them that you so intensely dislike?

[Ken B]

War and Peace
Anna Karenina
8 more



Seriously, those two are easy. Then probably Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Denisovich.

I am looking for what to read next right now, today. Leading contender is Elmer Gantry, but maybe Dead Souls or Life and Fate ..

Andrei, here's your chance ...

[Brian]

I feel comfortable with this eccentric top three

1. Dead Souls - Gogol
2. Eugene Onegin - Pushkin
3. Petersburg - Bely

Also on my list:

Anna Karenina
The Master and Margarita
The Captain's Daughter
Crime and Punishment

In general, as a teenager I loved Dostoevsky and hated Tolstoy, but now respect Tolstoy more as a writer while disliking both authors' heavy-handed and one-sided moralizing. (Levin's stuff about farming techniques in Anna Karenina is borderline intolerable, but the rest is great; I loved Karamazov in college but on a recent revisit couldn't understand what I liked at all.)


on my to-read list:
Life & Fate
Virgin Soil
War & Peace

Top ten short stories: "The Return" by Andrey Platonov and 9 stories by Gogol

[Mister Sharpe]

Lermontov's A Hero of our Time is conspicuously absent here. I remember my copy for its Edward Gorey cover and the novel for its fount of memorable quotations: "What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet."

[bwv 1080]

Iow, you can't stomach some of the greatest novels ever written. What is it about them that you so intensely dislike?

Just don't like 19th century Europeans I guess.  Americans are OK.  My last attempt was Charterhouse of Parma, the first part with the battle of Waterloo was good, then it got into all this boring stuff about the post-Napoleonic Italian aristocracy and all their foibles

[Parsifal]

I feel comfortable with this eccentric top three

1. Dead Souls - Gogol
2. Eugene Onegin - Pushkin
3. Petersburg - Bely

Also on my list:

Anna Karenina
The Master and Margarita
The Captain's Daughter
Crime and Punishment

In general, as a teenager I loved Dostoevsky and hated Tolstoy, but now respect Tolstoy more as a writer while disliking both authors' heavy-handed and one-sided moralizing. (Levin's stuff about farming techniques in Anna Karenina is borderline intolerable, but the rest is great; I loved Karamazov in college but on a recent revisit couldn't understand what I liked at all.)


on my to-read list:
Life & Fate
Virgin Soil
War & Peace

Top ten short stories: "The Return" by Andrey Platonov and 9 stories by Gogol

I don't think it is too pedantic to point out that Eugene Onegin is a poem.

I recall reading "The Brothers Karamotsav" three times. The first time I loved it, the second time I hated it, the third time I loved it again. I still think that "The Idiot" is my favorite book of Dostoyevski. I did not get Master and Margerita.

[Florestan]

I am looking for what to read next right now, today. Leading contender is Elmer Gantry, but maybe Dead Souls or Life and Fate ..

Andrei, here's your chance ...

Life and Fate. Don't walk, run!

[Florestan]

Just don't like 19th century Europeans I guess.

That includes Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler, I presume.

[Parsifal]

That includes Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler, I presume.

I'm not sure I would like any of them, although they wrote fine music. Maybe Mahler.

[bwv 1080]

That includes Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler, I presume.

Hell, I can barely tolerate 21st century Europeans 

[Florestan]

I'm not sure I would like any of them, although they wrote fine music. Maybe Mahler.

Hah! Nice one. 

Hell, I can barely tolerate 21st century Europeans 

I noticed that. They don't even deserve a grudging thanks for publicly appreciating your performances... 

[bwv 1080]

[quote author=Florestan link=topic=27424.msg1092217#msg1092217 date=1506108202

I noticed that. They don't even deserve a grudging thanks for publicly appreciating your performances... 
[/quote]

Thanks for that BTW