Reading Envy 245: Looking Back at the Russian Novel

At the end of March, a handful of us gathered to discuss what we had read for the Russian novel quarter of Reading Envy Russia. We also discuss the works we abandoned, some dips into Ukrainian literature, and talked more about what makes a novel quintessentially Russian. Thanks to all who joined in during this chat, in Goodreads, and in social media!

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Reading Envy 245: Looking Back at the Russian Novel 

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Books discussed:

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them by Elif Batuman
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, translated by Paul Foote
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva, translated by Carol Apollonio
The Hall of the Singing Caryatids by Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew Bromfield
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Marian Schwarz
The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Eugene Ostahevsky
Life Went on Anyway: Stories by Oleg Sentsov, translated by Uilleam Blacker


Other mentions:

Ted Chiang
Ken Liu
Hanya Yanagihara
"Men Who Explain Lolita to Me" by Rebecca Solnit on LitHub
"Dead Soul" by Masha Gessen in Vanity Fair
St. Michael's bells ringing in 2013

Related episodes:

Episode 237 - Reading Goals 2022
Episode 241 - Feral Pigeons with Laurie
Episode 243 - Russian Novel Speed Date 

Stalk us online:

Reading Envy Readers on Goodreads (home of Reading Envy Russia)
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. You can see the full collection for Reading Envy Russia 2022 on Bookshop.org.