Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • I thoroughly enjoyed Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and White Nights, but I'm finding myself slogging through Karamazov. I'm about 600 pages in and its picking up at least. Banking on it all being worth it in the end. Normally I subscribe to the quote "life's too short to read a bad book", but making an exception for Dostoyevsky.
    by still-learning
  • I am genuinely curious why Russian literature is so popular in non-Russian speaking world. How do you wake up one day and decide to read Crime and Punishment? How do you find out about Russian literature in the first place? Recommendation from a friend, marketing in your favorite book store, school? Could somebody shed some light
    by perfunctory
  • Lol, remember being in my early 20s on a train and trying to read Crime and Punishhment, and just kept skipping random 5 pages here and there, before going back to playing Durak with some random Tajiks (who got kicked off the train in some random place...). The huge pages of French didn't help.

    Prefered Demons, personally. Probably becuase I read it when more mature.

    by gaiagraphia
  • I also stumbled onto Crime and Punishment at 18 and expected it to be difficult and was blown away with how Dostoyevsky wrote one of the greatest novels of all time, to be sure, but as the author here says, also how engaging he made it.

    The scene where he commits the crime is an absolute stunner, edge-of-your-seat, thriller. Who does that? Who can pull that off? Dostoyevsky

    by david927
  • I (precocious, pretentious me) read Anna Karenina in 7th grade. It was long but not difficult. Keeping track of the characters was the hardest part.

    I’d like to say the story stayed with me, but alas it was the reaction of adults to my reading matter that I remember.

    Part of growing up was realizing that being precocious really isn’t a thing anymore at some point.

    by shermantanktop
  • Vennira Iravugal (White Nights) translated in Tamil by R. Krishnaiyya was my first read from Dostoyevsky's works. I came to a realisation that the dynamics of formative romance, anguish of unrequitedness, dithering nature of one's mind towards commitment have long been fundamental characteristics of a human being from the time immemorial (at least from when this book was published in 1848) after the read. Dostoyevsky has this acumen of rightly pointing out primal nature of a human in various settings through his stories. Crime and Punishment, which I read in English, entrenched this view in my mind undisputedly.

    Tamil translators have done astonishing efforts in presenting the worlds and sentiments of Dostoyevsky, yet I cannot compare it with OG Russian versions as I do not know Russian. I might one day be in a position to read his classics in native versions (I want to learn Russian for this).

    by darthvaderxx7
  • As a Russian native speaker who graduated from the high school in Russia many years ago, one thing that I don't really understand is why these great works of Russian literature are included in the school must read list. An average teenager, myself included, always has some better things to do than reading a huge novel, barely understanding characters' motivations, because neither of these books were ever intended for teens.

    Those who find time later in their adult life will re-read the classics and appreciate it, but many will not, and that's probably a result of forcing the kids to deal with something most of them are not ready for.

    by ventana
  • I was blown away by Crime and Punishment. I truly felt like I was the main character, and I read it with feverish sweat and dread for my impending doom. I cringed and felt terrible sadness at the poor little lives of certain individuals. So much woe and tragedy. I was glad to see how it turned out though.

    I'm currently reading Karamazov and it's good to have something a bit more jovial and dry witted.

    The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.

    I love the Space Trilogy by Lewis but I lose my place when he describes a place. Dostoevsky is better at describing people (and bringing them to life in your mind) than Lewis is at describing a landscape.

    by SugarReflex

Explore Birbla archives