Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Book reviews for "Belyaev,_Aleksandr" sorted by average review score:

Peace, Love and Healing: Bodymind Communication and the Path to Self-Healing: An Exploration
Published in Paperback by Walker & Co (March, 1990)
Authors: Bernie S. Siegel and Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Amazon base price: $13.27
List price: $18.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $2.70
Average review score:

Essential reading for everyone's health
Bernie Siegel writes in a very conversational-easy-to-read style in a book packed with information, facts, and understanding which is helpful for everyone regarding the connection between mind-body healing. Bernie Siegel helps us to take responsibility for our own health and to work as a team member with medical professionals in a co-operative style of relating.
Having fairly recently been diagnosed with an advanced cancer this book helped me to see cancer in a new light.
Everyone would bemnefit from reading this book for their health in general.

Excellent book!
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in their health! You will learn about true healing, from the inside out.

Highest Praise to Dr Bernie Siegel
I have been blessed to attend several of his workshops & have met & talked with him in person & frequently email back & forth, He is a very very special person & he helped me successfully control a life threatening rare illness so I could use the illness as a gift & catalyst for living well & being able to achieve my dreams -Marsha Lampert MBA MS Wantagh NY


Alexander Pushkin: The Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)
Published in Hardcover by Everymans Library (June, 1999)
Authors: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Alexander Pushkin, Paul Debreczeny, Walter Arndt, and John Bayley
Amazon base price: $14.00
List price: $20.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $13.79
Buy one from zShops for: $13.16
Average review score:

Thrilling Tales of Adventure and Romance!
This book contains the major prose works of Aleksandr Pushkin, which include "The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin", "Dubrovskii", "The Queen of Spades", "The Captain's Daughter", and "A History of Pugachev". Also included in the book are many unfinished stories and fragments, which provide some glimpse into what Pushkin was thinking in between the years that he wrote his masterpieces.

Pushkin's stories range from melancholy to humorous to psychological and yet they are all written in a clear, and crisp style that is easy to grasp. Unlike Pushkin's poetry, little is lost in the translation of his prose works from Russian to English and thus we can fully appreciate his genius.

Although all of Pushkin's prose works are excellent, but one that continues to remain in my memory for some reason is "Egyptian Nights". Here the two main characters are Charskii, the nobleman who upholds the aesthetic and personal nature of poetry writing, and the greedy Italian improvisator, who lives by giving public shows and is able to deliver a poem (and quite astonishing at that) on any topic at a moment's notice - but for a fee. Is it possible that Charskii and the Italian both represent different facets of Pushkin's own personality? Anyway, I thought the story ending was erotic and exotic...

Even if you are not interested in Russian literature or in Russian culture in general, I would daresay that you would find it hard to put this collection of stories down after you started reading them.

The only problem that I had was with the publisher. I wish that they had provided a bookcover, because the paint on the outside of the hardcover kept coming off onto my hands!

Russian Literature, Russian Love
If you want to sincerely have a happy, fulfilling marriage to a Russian lady then you better not be complacent either.  Study the Pimsleur language lessons, read all the books you can, study Russian history and culture, read their literature.  The works of Pushkin alone are rewarding for any scholar with or without the motive of a beautiful Russian bride!

Pushkin's prose
English Literature has its Shakespeare, American its Melville, German its Goethe, and Russian Literature, well, it has Alexander Pushkin. Although there are a lot of well-known and frequently-read writers from the 19th century Russia, like Gogol, Tolstoi or Dostoyevski, Pushkin is supposed to be the one who started the movement which made Russian Literature part of World Literature.

Pushkin is known as a poet (his novel "Eugen Onegin", written in verses, is the crown of his art), not as a dramatist or a novelist. As a citizen of the former Soviet Union, I know from my own experience that school children have to learn his poetry by heart from the very beginning of their school career. Even if his prose couldn't reach the importance of his poetry, it could still establish some reputation because of its uniqueness. This collection unites his greatest works in prose. Since the stories vary in kind and quality, I decided to write a short comment on some of them hoping that the review will be more helpful this way.

DUBROVSKII (5 STARS): This is a story about a young man desperate to take revenge on the man who killed his father. As a wanted criminal, Dubrovskii assumes the identity of a French teacher at his enemy's and lures for the possibility to hold his word and to kill the man he hates the most. Making his plans, he didn't expect to fall in love with the daughter of his victim. Since their love is mutual, he must decide what is more important for him, his love or his revenge... This story is the most famous of Pushkin's works. It takes place in Russia of the 18th century with its problems and victories. "Dubrovskii" portrays the struggle of different classes, of the new society influenced by the Western world and the old Russian rule that doesn't accept any changes without a battle.

THE QUEEN OF SPADES (2 STARS): This is probably the only story in this collection I didn't like at all. It presents us a young officer seeking the gambling trick of an old lady that would make him rich overnight. It's no surprise that he fails and loses everything including his mind. The story is quite predictable and offers moral views that rather belong into a children's book than a work of fiction for adults.

THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER (4 STARS): This is Pushkin's only story that reaches the length of a novel. Its background is Pugachev's revolt that took place in the late 18th century. The main character is the somewhat naive young man falling in love with the daughter of his commanding officer who gets killed during the revolt. He struggles to save her from the bandits and almost loses his life doing it. The story shows us Pushkin's turn towards Romantic period in literature and his ways of looking at the past of his country. "The Captain's Daughter" can be easily called a historical novel containing some critisicm of society. The negative point about it was the feeling that the plot is somehow constructed, artificial beyond artistic liberties. The parallels to "Dubrovskii" are obvious though they don't minimize the pleasure of reading.

This volume presents us Pushkin's prose (there are more stories than commented on above). As told before, some of it is excellent, some isn't. Nevertheless I rate this book with 5 stars because it unites works by Alexander Pushkin that MUST be read by someone who is interested in him.


The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin
Published in Paperback by W.W. Norton & Company (September, 1968)
Authors: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Gillon R. Aitken, and Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
Amazon base price: $11.87
List price: $16.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $3.25
Buy one from zShops for: $11.78
Average review score:

The Best of Them All
Virtually anybody who prepares a list of the five greatest writers in world history will include at least one Russian on the list. If there is only one, that one should be Pushkin.

Unfortunately, Pushkin is given short shrift outside of his homeland. The reason is not hard to explain - most of his work is poetry, which translates badly. What's worse, even in translation his poetry wouldn't read any better than, say, Lermontov, whereas the difference would be obvious to a Russian, just as the difference between Shakespeare and Marlowe would be to an English speaker.

Pushkin's prose works provide a basis for remedying the situation. His stories are disarmingly simple and readable, just like his poetry. Yet practically every major Russian novelist of the nineteenth century acknowledged his debt to Pushkin as a model and crafter of prose, as well as a source of themes. This includes Gogol, Goncharov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

My personal favorites are "The Captain's Daughter", "The Moor of Peter the Great", which is about Pushkin's own great grandfather, who was Ethiopian, and most of all "The Queen of Spades", which practically singlehandedly created the genre of stories of the supernatural. Any one of the stories can be done in one sitting (well, maybe one long sitting for a few of them). Do yourself a favor and make the acquaintance of one of the best writers that ever lived.

Pushkin's Genius Never Fails to Give Us Pleasure!
Given the crowded field of the 19th century writers of the Russian Empire, Pushkin is not appreciated enough. And it's understandable - with Gogol, Dostoievski, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov and Chekhov around, Pushkin gets squeezed out. His prose and his plays are wonderful to read even in translation, and if you're lucky enough to be able to read Russian, his poetry is simply unsurpassed among the Slavic poets, even the Polish Mickiewicz and the Ukrainian Shevchenko. Pushkin the poet belongs with Shakespeare, Goethe and Byron. Pushkin's stories are fun to read, and are a good introduction to the big league Russian Empire writers that follow him.

Master of Short Stories: Pushkin
Pushkin is a master of the short story form. His stories are written in the clear, taut, concise form that he has become famous for. The Aiken translation is considered by many Russians to be the best. Especially recommended are the TALES OF BELKIN, The Postmaster. Have fun!


Alexander Pushkin: Complete Prose Fiction
Published in Hardcover by Stanford Univ Pr (May, 1983)
Authors: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Paul Debreczeny, Alexander Pushkin, and Walter W. Arndt
Amazon base price: $65.00
Used price: $47.50
Average review score:

Pushkin defines Russian literature
Pushkin is to Russian speakers what Shakespeare is to English speakers. His influence on the prose and poetry of the language is second to no one and writing influences Russian literature to this day. Amazingly Pushkin only lived until the age of 38. Even now you can visit his gravesite (as I did) and still see teenage girls weeping and putting flowers on his grave.

This edition of the complete prose of Pushkin is truly excellent. The Queen of Spades and the Captain's Daughter are included are and are worth the price alone.

The translators, Arndt and Debreczeny, do a fine job in translating Pushkin's prose, while the stories are set up in chronological order so the reader can see Pushkin's growth as a prose writer. In fact this was the volume of Pushkin writings in English I took with me while living in Russia for a short while.

Very readable and a worthwhile introduction to the greatest of Russian writers.

Excellent walk through Pushkin's prose maturation
What makes this book so beautiful is that word "Complete". In one handy reference you can enjoy all of Pushkin's prose. Mr. Debreczeny's translation of Pushkin's work is hearty. I believe it's nearly as close as we can come to feeling the work outside of really knowing Russian.

That would be amazing for me: to know Russian and read Pushkin in the language that he raised high in the face of the patrician encroachment of French that had relegated Russian to servant status. Each language must have a unique and valuable propriety in it's innermost meanings, and in reading this work (plus knowing something of Russian culture), I believe you can feel that unique Russian "thing" even through this translation.

You have about fifteen pieces plus Pushkin's own pre-work/research and some fragments. Mr. Debreczeny has arranged them such that you walk through the development of Pushkin as a prose writer. Early on, he did have quite a disdain for prose in comparison to poetry. To paraphrase Debreczeny, Pushkin's first serious writing treated prose as a necessary evil, writing with technical correctness but approaching parody of itself with strict adherence to the concept of prose as a sterile, low medium for expression.

I the later works, you will see the layering of complex themes and characters into prose that for me felt like driving a standard shift with power-assisted steering -- You get just enough resistance to feel the road and keep you engaged and thinking. Also, you just plain enjoy the ride.

Mr. Debreczeny is an excellent guide in his commentary and in his translation.


Captain's Daughter and Other Stories
Published in Paperback by Random House Trade Paperbacks (September, 1957)
Author: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
Amazon base price: $8.76
List price: $10.95 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $1.40
Collectible price: $2.50
Buy one from zShops for: $4.89
Average review score:

The Master of Russian Literature
Pushkin greatest renoun is based on his poetry. But I like his short stories very much. They are crisp, intriguing, and educational. These stories are a treasure of Russian literature. They combine mystery and realism, persuasive language and simplicity--all trademarks of Pushkin's genius.

The dream of life.
Pushkin is Mozart of Russian verse, prose and drama. That sounds like banality to any Russian but may help a person outside of our literary tradition to deal with the Russia's greatest writer.

Small, less than handsome misfit in a constant and direct dialog with the Muses. A man whose social, financial and matrimonial achievements are no match to his art.

His talents bloomed in the Lyceum, he was hailed by the most prominent poet of Russian Classicism - Gavrila Derzhavin, who had appointed the youngster his poetical heir.

But Pushkin made only a few contributions to the genre - he was a devoted romantic, a Byronite. Mermaids, gypsies and noble robber brothers were the inhabitants of his adolescent poems.

Drinking bouts with local Hussar officers were toppled by the boy's passionate odes to Liberty. Alexander was a celebrity guest.

The guest he remained. The officers - The Decembrists - rebelled against the tsar. Puskin was not invited. The conspirators felt that "the son of the Muses" is fond of the revolutionary rhetorics, not the cause.

Later, asked by the triumphant monarch does he regret his absence in rebellious ranks on that fateful December day, Pushkin confirmed his affinity with his hanged friends. He wanted to be taking seriously, he was ready to suffer. But the tsar was only amused and let Alexander go.

Pushkin soared high in empirea, the verse of unbelievable beauty and clarity was streaming from his quill, but his everyday life was dominated by gambling, drinking and chasing the known libertines. Yearning to be accepted socially he offered his friendship to unworthy and very often had to contend with their condescending attitude. He was not the first socially awkward creator in human history but that understanding did nothing to lessen the pain.

In his final years Pushkin decided to settle down, to accept the responsibilities, to marry, to get the position in the tsar's court.

Natalia Goncharova, the first beauty of Petersburg, consented to marry him - her family was impoverished, Alexander - insistent. He was given the court rank - kamerjunker, nearly the lowest in the hierarchy, fit for a very young man making his very first steps in the court. He was insulted but the wife's acclaimed beauty compensated for that and the other disapointments. They all envy him - the lucky man!

There was never enough money to put that gem in a proper setting. The beauty was expecting her due. If Alexander is incapable there are others.

Art remained the only consolation. Once he woke up in the middle of the night, put on a light and fevereshly scribbled the newborn lines. He read them to the wife. - Don't you ever do that to me again! - said the sleepy beauty.

His art is not able to conquer that perfection, the beauty of verse is nothing to the beauty of flesh.

Pushkin is made fun of, proclaimed a cuckold. His life is nearing the end.

In his last year the tortured genius writes Captain's Daughter. No mermaids here, no gypsies. It's clarity and restrained beauty is unsurpassed in our literature.

A son of old officer Petr Andreevich Grinev turns seventeen. He is enlisted as a toddler in a prestigeous regiment in Petersburg, now he is an officer already. He has no extensive education - just the basic ideas of nobility and some knowledge of French. His name is telling - Petr means a stone, father's name - a man, a male. The father wants to keep the son unspoiled - Petr is refused his ticket to the Petersburg. He goes to the steppes instead, to the fortress in the middle of nowhere.

On the way he gets drunk, loses money, suffers from hangover, abuses his old servant - with no harm to his inner integrity.

He begins to enjoy the simple life in the fortress, captain's daughter is aware if his feelings and seems to feel the same way. Short and ugly comrade-in-arms, Alexei Shvabrin envies him and speaks dirty of the girl. Duel puts Petr in a bed. The love flourishes.

All that a prelude to the Russian rebellion, "senseless and merciless".

The fortress is taken, the captain is hanged, his wife lies naked and dead in a dirt. Petr's life is spared on impostor's whim. Masha, the captain's daughter, is hidden in the local priest's house. Shvabrin is appointed the fortress commander and has the girl who rejected him in his power.

All will end well. The young lovers are ready to sacrifice, their love will conquer all, the empress Ekaterina is merciful - just like her adversary "emperor" Pugachev.

Like a drowning man gasping for air Pushkin had to get in contact with the qualities his life is so utterlly lacking - integrity, loyalty,love accepted and given back. He had experienced all that in Captain's Daughter.

No matter what happens Petr Grinev is true to his nature - the quality respected by friends and enemies. He is always ready to do the right thing - no matter what's the price. There are things more important than life. Or love.

Puskin's life is over, he is not respected, not loved by the woman he chose. So he escapes in art, lives another life, the dream of life he never had.

Less talented writer would have succumbed to the pure escapism, but Alexander Pushkin is a genius, what we have instead is a timeless masterpiece, clear and restrained, very modern prose, the characters we care about. No one succeed in imitating that style.

Puskin is not very well known in the West. The verse is so Russian it defies a translation, the prose is deceptively simple - it's very different from "prophetic" writings of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, the export variant of The Great Late Russian Literature. The reader used to contemplating "the mysterious Russian soul" will be disappointed.

I am reluctant to recommend that book to a Western reader.But Pushkin is one of the reasons I still live here.


Mazurkas, Poemes, Impromptus and Other Works for Piano
Published in Paperback by Dover Pubns (April, 1991)
Authors: Alexander Scriabin and Aleksandr Nikolayevich Scriabin
Amazon base price: $11.87
List price: $16.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $13.20
Buy one from zShops for: $11.82
Average review score:

Some of the most gorgeous works in the piano repertoire
Dover publishes complete works of many composers, and they did pianists a huge favor by compiling the works of Scriabin into several volumes of music. Scriabin, a "bridge" composer between the 19th and 20th Century, composed romantic yet modernistic works sometimes reminiscent of Chopin. His later work was far more dense and individualistic. Unfortunately, he died in his 40's, but, like the short-lived Schubert,he left a considerable volume of works for the piano. The other Dover volumes are the Sonatas and the Preludes and Etudes. Logically, they put other minor works (nocturnes, dances, etc) into this volume.

If you are a skilled pianist, try the Op. 28 Fantasie. This work, sadly, is rarely recorded but is one of the most incredibly gorgeous things ever written for piano. The only other copy of this I own is in a Hungarian edition not available in the US, so rejoice if you play piano.

Dover prints music that is easy to read and the editing is usually blameless. This book is no exception. Highly recommended for serious piano students.

.....as well.
What the above review failed to mention is that the "Muzurkas, Poems, and Impromptues" book contains all of Scriabin's piano music excepting that which is contained in the "Preludes and Etudes" and the "Piano Sonata's" books. All three of these books are published by Dover and are not altered to death buy rotten editors. Comprehensive editions of composer's works are very valuable and often a huge oversight in the unusually chopy realm of sheet music. The book is also made as good as paperbacks get.

Overlooked composer Scriabin's musical thoughts in print!!

This collection of mostly unrelated works by AlexanderNicolyavich Scriaban (1872-1915) is most undoubtedly the crown jewelof Twentieth-Century piano music; yet it is almost totally overlooked historically as well as musically. It represents not his ordered compositions, as do his preludes and etudes, but rather his sporadic, sometimes psychotic thoughts; it is a veritable musical diary of the very bizarre and mystical life of the great Russian enigma. It belongs on the shelf of any serious music student, especially those of Russian music, for in this myriad of masterworks are the very core of the underappreciated and often entirely overlooked Alexander N. Scriabin.


The First Circle
Published in Paperback by HarperCollins (paper) (June, 1990)
Author: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Amazon base price: $17.00
Used price: $1.00
Buy one from zShops for: $10.00
Average review score:

Injustice in Stalin's Soviet Union
The book's title refers to the first circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. This is the least oppressive level of Hell. The prison camp described in this book offers plenty of food to the prisoners, no backbreaking physical labor, and a warm bed. Most of Stalin's prison camps are located in Siberia where the prisoners freeze and starve. What accounts for Stalin's leniency? The prisoners are scientists working on top secret projects like a telephone for Stalin's use that can't be tapped, and a system of identifying anonymous voices on public telephones by the voice prints, similar to finger prints. In Stalin's evil country, you are not innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty as soon as you are arrested. One prisoner was put in jail because his neighbors wanted his family's apartment and made up an unsupported lie about him. They got the apartment and destroyed his life and family. Most of the prisoners were WW2 vets, POWs returning from Germany. They weren't welcomed home with appreciation and honor. They were lured home by lies, and immediately imprisoned.

There are many great characters. You'll remember Nerzhin and his wife, and wonder how things will work out for them. You'll remember Rubin, the sincere communist caught in the web of the system he believes in. You'll remember Innokenty Volodin, in trouble for doing a good deed, as innocent as his first name. When you read a mediocre book there are no characters to remember, just a predictable formulaic storyline and a group of people and events you find hard to believe. This is a rare opportunity for you to be a fly on the wall, halfway around the world, observing life in a Russian prison camp. The reason I give it only 4 stars is because I like happy endings and resolved problems. This book would make a good movie. There's plenty of room for a sequel (which hasn't been written) where we can find a satisfactory ending for some of the characters. Stalin the insane sewer rat died eventually and was denounced by Khrushchev, so maybe in time these people were allowed to live out the rest of their lives in freedom.

The First Circle
What makes The First Circle such a great book (the best I've read by Solzhenitsyn) is how he reduces a political system and economic ideology to individual choices. It was a system built upon greed, jealousy, selfish pragmatism and fear, the vanity of Stalin, the petty rivalry between commanding officers, the desperate connivance of a prisoner who will turn against his fellow man in order to better his own lot. In other words, humanity.

The consequences were also human: the loss of the prime years of a man's life, a life without the love of a woman, a father worrying about the fate of his young daughter thousands of miles away. Solzhenitsyn does a masterful job of rendering the real world behind philosophy and ideology, the world the USSR lost sight of when they placed ends before means.

In the end, what is perhaps most frightening is that the face of evil is so banal.

Its the pure delight of irony merged in tragedy and humor
No other book will summarize so brilliantly the absurdity of a system in which the quest for the common good was just a trap for the independence and free will of each person. All the events during the novel take place in just one week. Nevertheless during that brief period the author manages to convey the dark existence for millions of citizens of the USSR during the whole Stalinst period, so the overall impression is that the novel drags on for years and years.

The narration of the story takes place in several different fronts which seem to connect at the end, but that never happens. Each character goes on with his life, and the reader is left to wonder what happened. Oddly enough this is part of the beauty of this novel and makes a lot of sense because Solzhenitzyn will stress until the end the lack of right for any person or system to deny a person of its individuality and abrogate for itself the power to guide other's destiny. Threfore, how could he do the same to the members of its novel? So he refuses to place a final point to their development.

To put it more briefly, just read it is a great book.


Cancer Ward
Published in Hardcover by Random House Trade (September, 1989)
Authors: Nicholas Bethell, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, and David Burg
Amazon base price: $10.95
Average review score:

Accurate depiction of the world of the cancer patient
Having just finished reading it for the third time, I believe that Cancer Ward is a very fine novel, rich at many levels: in its depiction of Soviet provincial society in 1955, a poor society just emerging from Stalinism; in its portrayal of many separate characters (doctors, nurses, patients, hospital workers) in that society, many of whose lives have been permanently damaged by the terror and the GULAG, but in different ways; and, as I know from personal experience, in its depiction of the isolated world of the cancer patient, from which the rest of society is seen dimly, as though through dirty glass. In spite of all medical progress, the basics of this world have not changed much in 50 years: the core treatments are still surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and the side effects both long and short term can still be brutal.

The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.

This much overlooked novel is perhaps Solzhenitsyn's best.
Cancer Ward is often overshadowed by its predecessor, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and its successor, the immense memoir, The Gulag Archipelago. While the worldly impact of those two works is perhaps greater, the aesthetic power of Cancer Ward is stronger than both of those works. The story is poignant and powerful, reaching out and probing deeply into the essential questions that are never answered by not only Soviet society, but western culture as a whole. The religious message that emerges is stunning and unique, recalling the works of Dostoyevsky. Overall, this is an excellent book, and any reader who enjoyed One Day or Gulag will be blown away by this work.

The Sickness of the Soviet Empire
Reading Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" without the historical background of the country in which it is set, a casual reader would be shocked to learn this book was banned by the Soviet government for many years. This book would seem to be nothing more than a sad story of life in a poor country's ward for terminally ill cancer patients. But through the interaction and description of the doctors and patients in Solzhenitsyn's brilliant novel, especially the loveable protagonist Kostoglotov, it becomes apparent that the ward is the Soviet system in a microcosm. With that understanding, this becomes one of the most scathing indictments of a totalitarian state written in the 20th Century. Even Orwell's great novels were not as passionately and directly damning of the Evil Empire.

This is a very typical Russian novel in that the setting is very stationary, the plot is slow moving and not well-defined in many parts, but it is also psychologically deep and gives the reader an immensely profound look at the minds and souls of its characters. But what separates this from so many Russian novels, especially those of the 20th century is that it slams the Communist regime while taking a bleak, Dostoevsky-like view of man as well. Kostoglotov's experiences at the end of this book are not as cathartic as those of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy characters, but the hope that he has is clearly the same in that it stems from a source greater than him or any man. This is an emotionally challenging book and the interpretation of the ending is divisive (just read some reviews here to see both opinions), but that just adds to the genius of this book. I believe the ending is phenomenally beautiful and Solzhenitsyn at his best.

This is a classic that is unfairly dismissed by today's modern, Western, intellectual elites, but its historical significance is undeniable. This book along with a few others inspired the anti-Soviet movement in the U.S., its allied countries, and the democratic revolutionaries inside of Russia in their eventually successful quest to destroy the most murderous empire our world has ever seen.

"Two things he liked: a free life and money in his pocket. They were writing from the clinic, 'If you don't come yourself the police will fetch you.' That's the sort of power the clinic had, even over people who hadn't got any cancer whatever."

God bless Alexander Solzhenitsyn.


1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Published in Paperback by Westview Press (January, 1973)
Authors: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn and Thomas P. Whitney
Amazon base price: $20.00
Used price: $9.95
Collectible price: $9.00
Average review score:

A Personal Perspective
Solzhenitsyn's three-volume record (although I read only the first) is deeply moving for the description of its intensity. Having won the author a Nobel prize for Literature, I half expected some unapproachably haughty Kunderesque crypto-novel, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Archipelag Gulag is the 'island chain' of the concentration camps that streched throughout the most remote and uninhabitable regions of the Soviet Union. Through his own eyes, and those of 227 fellow survivors, he relates in a deeply sarcastic yet sympathetic way the movement and experience of the individual through the system with such beauty and so completely that one feels one can almost begin to understand. One suspects that his sense for black humor must have helped him survive. I was relieved not to find here any simpering gushy 'forgiveness' of his opressors-- Solzhenitsyn knows them and understands how they were able to exact such terror, and he fully holds them accountable.

I would most emphatically persuade you to read this.

Bombastic Brilliant Unforgetable
What ever faults "Gulag Archipelago" may have, it is a monumental and important work. For anyone who does not know the meaning of the title, "Gulag" is the Russian word for prison, and an archipelago is, of course, a chain of islands. The idea behind this is that the Soviet concentration camp system under Lenin and Stalin were like an island of prisons spread all over the Soviet Union.

The content of "Gulag Archipelago" is quite extraordinary. Solzhenitsyn includes countless anecdotes of prisoners and their families in various phases of arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, slave labor, death, or release. He buttresses these stories with statistics, and with his own personal narrative of his years in the Gulag. The information in this book is simply staggering, not only for the cruelty and evil it describes but also the folly. The Soviet government murdered indiscriminately across all lines of race, class, and gender. In many cases, it murdered the most brilliant and productive members of its society--the very people who could have built it into something great.

Many people take umbrage with Solzhenitsyn's style, which involves a lot of ranting and run-on footnotes. Personally, I find his narrative interesting and invigorating. Solzhenitsyn's narrative is vigorous, untrammeled and loaded with sarcasm. While many find this gimmicky or uncultured, it helped buoy me through the unbearable sadness of the book's subject matter.

Obviously this book isn't for everybody and it requires a considerable degree of fortitude to get through it. But I think it is essential in all our lives to read this book or one similar to it.

Stalin's Crimes Against Humanity
This is Solzhenitsyn's massive indictment of the former Soviet Union's system of justice as told from the author's personal experiences and from the oral and written accounts of survivors and others familiar with many of the incidents related in the book. While reading "The Gulag Archipelago" I had to keep reminding myself that this is not the product of the author's imagination but that of events that really happened. Solzhenitzyn writes with a poisoned pen steeped in anger and bitterness, albeit with God guiding his hand. Stalin's system, born under Lenin, resulted in the deaths of millions of patriotic Soviet citizens, many of them loyal Communists and earlier supporters of Lenin, and many of whom were directly involved in the events leading to the overthrow of the tsarist regime. Many of the accusers (as the government prosecutors were called in the Lenin era), interrogators, prison officials, and even judges were themselves later swept up under Stalin.

It was Article 58 of the broad-sweeping Soviet Criminal Code that resulted in the execution or imprisonment of the millions whom Stalin called counterrevolutionaries. Article 58 included acts ranging from crimes against the state (e.g. a prisoner weakened from illness or malnutrition could be shot for being unable to work), to consorting with foreigners to economic sabotage, called "wrecking." Examples of wrecking included a peasant's making a bad decision that resulted in crop failure or a factory employee's machine accidentally catching on fire.

Aptly referred to by Solzhenitsyn as the Soviet Union's "sewerage disposal system," some of the horrifying methods utilized by the Stalin regime to rid itself of "undesirables" include those of a suspect being arrested while undergoing surgery for repair of an ulcer, men and women under interrogation being beaten and tortured and deprived of sleep for days on end, camp internees' dying from being deprived of food and water, and contracting typhus and other diseases from massive overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. Prisoners, denied bathroom facilities or even buckets, were forced to lay in their own urine and excrement or to eat their meager rations from unwashed pails which previously contained coal or human waste. Solzhenitsyn recounts the bizarre but true history of a man, mistakenly believing he was Tsar Mikhail (the successor to Nicholas II), who was given a long prison sentence for having composed and then having read a proclamation to the Soviet citizenry promising better times under his own reign. Most sickening of all, at least to me, were those Russian soldiers who became German POWs and who were imprisoned after the allied victory by their own government for allegedly humiliating their motherland by failing to elude their German captors.

Considering the millions who disappeared during the Stalin regime, it is amazing that there was anyone left, especially someone as gifted a writer as Solzhenitsyn, to chronicle these horrors.


Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics)
Published in Paperback by Oxford University Press (August, 1998)
Authors: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, James E. Falen, and Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
Amazon base price: $8.95
Used price: $5.29
Collectible price: $9.50
Buy one from zShops for: $5.75
Average review score:

Never mention "literature" without reading this book!
I'm a Russian Language and Literature major in Yonsei Univ. in Korea. Having lived in Moscow for around 3 years, I'd heard there a lot about Pushkin and read many of his famous works. The most prestigious of his, however, must be "Onegin." It's a great mixture of verse and prose in its form. If possible, try to read this in Russian, as well. This long poetical prose was written for 8 years and the ending rhyme perfectly matches for the entire line until the very end. Compared to others, it is definitely a conspicuous and brilliant one. "Onegin" can be the author himself or yourself. The love between Onegin and TaTyana is neither the cheap kind of love that often appears in any books nor the tragic one that is intended to squeze your tears. As a literature, this book covers not only love between passionate youth, but also a large range of literary works in it, which can tell us about the contemporary literature current and its atmosphere. Calling Onegin "My friend", Pushkin, the author, shows the probability and likelihood of the work. Finally, I'm just sorry that the title has been changed into English. The original name must be "Yevgeni Onegin(¬¦¬Ó¬Ô¬Ö¬ß¬Ú¬Û ¬°¬ß¬Ö¬Ô¬Ú¬ß)." If you are a literature major or intersted in it, I'd like to recommand you read this. You can't help but loving the two lovers and may reread it, especially the two correspondences through a long period of time. Only with readng this book, you'll also learn a huge area of the contemporary literature of the 19th century from the books mentioned in "Onegin" that take part as its subtext. Enjoy yourself!

Unforgettable
I think this book/poem should be made manditory in every institution worldwide. I told everyone who was willing to listen and the rest that this was fantastic. I rang people while reading it to quote lines. It made me laugh and cry and was continuously brilliant. My every praise goes out to the translator.
When i had finished (by the way i read the whole thing in two sittings)i started flipping to random pages and found myself practically reading the whole thing all over again.
I do not speak Russian but have read many Russian books and this really does stand out as being amazing.

If you are thinking of reading this book you needn't think twice about it.

A Really Fun Translation of a Classic....
I have read four translations of this novel and James Falen's is my favorite one. He has translated Pushkin's classic in a fun, witty way which doesn't take too much away from the original Russian version (which I have also read). Granted, something is always lost in a translation, but it certainly doesn't take away from the humor and wit of this translation. If you are interested in a literal, as-close-to-the-original-as-possible translation, then I highly suggest Nabokov's translation, which (in my opinion) is somewhat dry and boring, but extremely accurate. It is all a matter of taste...what the reader wants. If you want accuracy, you will have to sacrifice some of the fun. If you want the fun, you will have to sacrifice some of the accuracy. I prefer the fun, therefore I preferred this version of Onegin.


Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Reviews are from readers at Amazon.com. To add a review, follow the Amazon buy link above.