this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Fiction Books
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Personally, my advice would be: don’t go to Tolstoj expecting something similar! He is so preachy compared to Dostoyevski, the characters don’t ring nearly as human and interesting.
On the other hand, everything I read of Dostoyevski is great, with Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov being at the top. I also find Victor Hugo to be similar (minus the weird naming conventions).
I got advised to read Master and Margherita, but I couldn’t get over the first dizen pages, but maybe it does it for you.
I know nothing of Turganev, honestly. I have read The Idiot and felt it was a little “less” than usual Dostoyevski, but I can highly recommend White Nights, a collection of short stories. I usually think of Dostoyevski as shining in long descriptions, but in White Nights he goes the other way and etches scenes with a minimal amount of details and still hitting the nail on the head. Notes from the Underground doesn’t have a good translation in my mother tongue, so I did not read it yet. Now that my English knowledge is good enough, I could look for a good English translation, but there are just too many books to read… what to read next is always a tough choice.
I’ll look forward to your comments, positive and negative!