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Review: Life and Fate


Life and Fate
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Meant to be one of these 'classics' which become a must read for everyone but for me it's the same as Dostoyevski's The Brother's Karamazov - unreadable. There must be something about Russian literature that causes me to become soporific. I just can't get into this. I've ploughed through a third of this but have finally closed the pages. I can't become caring about the characters, the plot has become meaningless. Perhaps I've committed some heresy with this book but I find it just turgid and cold.



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Comments

  1. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 15:57

    Yes, Russian lit is definitely an acquired taste. Personally, I never really got into Dostoevsky after college (or any other Russian prose author, really), though I remember enjoying Notes from Underground immensely.

    On the other hand, Russian philosophy is amazing. Mikhail Bakhtin was one of my professor's favourites during college, and that rubbed off on me a bit. And Nikolai Berdyaev's penetrating insights into the nature of religion really struck home for me, and (along with Kierkegaard and Samuel Johnson) he was one of my primary influences for 'rediscovering' the Anglican tradition after my secular wanderings (even though he was Eastern Orthodox).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris Hall14 February 2012 at 20:28

    Thanks for posting Matthew. Hopefully one day I will acquire a taste for such literature.

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