Translated by Antonina W. Bouis I managed to fit in a post for #VintageSciFiMonth this January in my third encounter with the Strugatsky brothers, after the completely lovable and madcap Monday starts on Saturday from 1964, and philosophical questing of Roadside Picnic from 1972. Also known as Definitely Maybe in the USA, thei novella One Read More
Category: Translated: Russian
Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur – a book pairing of opposites
This would have been just a single review – of Jennifer Saint’s retelling of Ariadne’s story from Greek Myth. But then Marina Sofia recently posted a review of Russian author Victor Pelevin’s Omon Ra, and I remembered I had Pelevin’s retelling of Theseus and the Minotaur from the Canongate Myths series on my shelves, and Read More
A dose of totally bonkers Russian SF from the Strugatsky brothers
Last year, a language missing from my reading in translation was Russian, and Karen picked me up on it 😀 when I published my annual stats. So, this year I’m making sure that doesn’t happen again by getting an early first read–it won’t be my last–of one of the Strugatsky brothers’ SF novels. I can Read More
Some good reads from pre-blog days, and what I thought about them then… #12
I haven’t done one of these posts for a couple of months, so here are five books in translation that I read in 2007-8 – pre-blog – and the capsule reviews I wrote then from my master spreadsheet. I was heartened to find more than this handful in translation from countries other than my most-read Read More
Year End Review 3: In Translation
I’ve given books read in translation their own section over the past couple of years to keep up the pressure on myself to read more widely from other countries. This year, I failed to keep up with last year’s success at 25 books (18%), managing just 18 (14%) up to my cut-off day of 25 Read More
20 Books of Summer #3 & #4 – Kurkov and Pinol
I’m already behind on reading and reviewing the pile of 20 books I selected (here), but I’m not a challenge completist! Anything that spurs me to reduce my TBR by a book or two is good. Today, I have two in translation for you. The Gardener from Ochakov by Andrey Kurkov Translated from the Russian Read More
Starting Anna Karenina again
In my teens, around the time of the wonderful BBC adaptation of War & Peace with Anthony Hopkins as Pierre, and ITV’s Anna Karenina with Nicola Pagett as the doomed heroine, I went through a real Russian phase in my reading. We had copies of most of the Russian greats already in the house as Read More
Reading Chekhov plays on the page for book group
About once a year, our book group feels adventurous and decides to read a play rather than a novel or non-fiction title. Last year we read The Weir by Conor McPherson which was rather wonderful. This year we decided to plump for some Chekhov and as the plays are short to read we picked The Read More
A Russian fairytale
The Year of Miracle and Grief by Leonid Borodin, translated by Jennifer Bradshaw Leonid Borodin was a writer, Soviet dissident and Christian. He was born in Irkutsk – one of those areas of Russia only familiar to me through the board-game Risk! He was imprisoned twice, the second time after the English publication of his Read More
The book that inspired 1984 and Brave New Worl
This post was republished into it’s original place in my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin Translated by Clarence Brown So, I finally read the book that inspired Orwell’s1984 (my brief write-up here). Many other dystopian novels have similarities, including Huxley’s Brave New World (my review here) although Huxley said he was actually inspired by HG Wells, Read More
The mad scientist and his red ray
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov Translated by Roger Cockerell Pre-blog, back in 2006, we read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov in our book group and I loved it. This novel about the devil coming to a town of Read More
