Hii!! Im making my way through classic books, but I’ve admittedly skipped Russian authors because they honestly scare me a little bit. Looking for a book that’s good for beginners (not over 300 pages, interesting, isn’t hard to understand). Thanks!! Also please recommend some books to read when I’m more acclimated to Russian literature.
by historicallypink16
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Chekhov, buy any short story collection
Tolstoy – death of Ivan Ilyich
There’s a Dover Thrift edition of *Great Russian Short Stories* which can give you a low stakes introduction to Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov (among others) for less than US$5. I’m sure that’s partly because all of the translations are old–potentially clunky–and royalty-free, but it’s still a great way to get oriented and to see what best calls to you for further reading.
Short works like Gogol’s “The Overcoat” or “The Nose” are both legendary classics which happen to also be short and funny. If you enjoy audiobooks, it’s long, but Stephen Fry has a reading of a 1990 translation of *Eugene Onegin* (licensed online for free downloading) that I thought was wonderful. Excellent company if you need to hunker down for a road trip and want Pushkin’s romantic balls, love affairs, duels, and people yearning to find meaning in all of it to keep you company for the ride.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. it’s a little bit bigger than 300 pages, but it IS interesting and “easier” than most Russian classics