I AM UKRAINIAN BUT ALSO I SPEAKE RUSSIAN. THE BOOK PRACTICALLY STRESSED ME WHEN I WAS YOUNG. NOW I AM THINKING ABOUT THE BEST TRANSLATION OF B.PASTERNAK'S POETRY GIVEN IN THIS BOOK, ESPECIALLY BICOUSE OF THE COMING SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY! IF SOMEBODY KNOWS GOOD TRANSLATION OF PASTERNAK'S "HAMLET" AND "SHAKESPEARE" PLEASE DO NOT HESISTATE TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME. ALSO I TRY TO TRANSLATE PASTERNAK'S POETRY INTO UKRAINIAN

This book goes into great detail about "Doctor Zhivago" by Pasternak. It is NOT obvious in the Amazon documentation that this is not the actual novel by Pasternak. DO NOT buy this book if you need to purchase the original novel.

Tsvetaeva's version of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn legend is one of her finest and most complex works. Angela Livingstone's translation is endowed with remarkable vitality.

This is an excellent collection of varied stories by a deeply troubled storyteller. From an Englishman designing canals for Peter the Great to returning World War I veterans to a young engineer trying to keep a village supplied with electricity, the characters are richly and movingly drawn. In their pessimism or difficult optimism, the stories easily demonstrate why they would not be favorites of the Soviet authorities, in spite of the author's communist beliefs; they are about the farthest thing imaginable from "socialist realism." (One is reminded of the complaints of Shostakovich -- not exactly a traditional dissident, either -- in his autobiography, Testamony, that the authorities evaluated his music based on the percentage of measures set in major vs. minor keys.) Several of the stories are powerful and quite memorable. Still, in spite of the encomia of the translator/reviewer above, it is hard for me to see that Platonov belongs in the highest ranks of 20th century Russian writers. Perhaps he simply loses too much in translation. I find (the English translations of) a number of other modern Russians to be much more compelling: Aksyanov, Bulgakov, Eppel, Grossman, Pelevin, and Ulitskaya, for example.

In "The Epifan Locks", Peter the Great orders an English engineer to build a network of locks and canals across Russia: nothing, not even human lives, is to stand in the way. Another story ("Lobskaya Hill") focuses on a man who has lost all that he has valued, and now, grief-stricken, lives in a sort of limbo between life and death. "Rubbish Wind" is so black and horrifying that even the most jaded of modern readers may be shocked; while "The Cow", written when Platonov's own teenage son was in a labour camp, describes with some tenderness how a cow dies of grief after its calf is taken to the abattoir. Best of all, perhaps, are "The River Potudan" and "The Return", both, asthe translator puts it, finely balanced between triumph and tragedy, and both dealing with the importance of accepting humanity for what it is: Platonov was a socialist, but no utopian. These two stories especially I found wonderfully moving.

This varied collection of stories was, for me, an excellent introduction to a writer of clearly major importance. Written mainly during the darkest days of Stalinism, they are a testament to the heroism involved merely in maintaining one's humanity.

I am a collector of Russian novelists and short story writers. I am a huge fan of Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, and more recently Grossman. Platonov is another wonderful example of a unique Russian writer. These stories are not only precise and highly-visual, they are uniquely constructed and they somehow get to the emotional heart of things without sentimentality. You cannot read this collection without coming away from it with your world-view altered. The translation is excellent. I am frequently irritated by translations that are either too literal or take too many liberties. This translation is perfect, as far as I'm concerned.