Ok – I saw this challenge, hosted by Keely, and decided it was irresistible. In 2014 I participated in o’s Russian Literature challenge, which was awesome, so I’m more than ready for another Russian lit focus!
I’ll be aiming for a large Level 2 “Chekhov”; these six books:
- Forever Flowing – Vasily Grossman. I heard about Grossman from one of my favorite book bloggers, SRK, and this sounds like a really good novel.
- The Letter Killers Club – Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. I loved this author’s writing style in Memories of the Future. This book is about a club of story tellers who are committed to writing nothing down.
- Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while, a Powell’s splurge. The Soviet era interests me, for academic and personal reasons, and I’m eager to read more by Solzhenitsyn, since he is one of the most famous Soviet authors.
- Five Plays – Anton Chekhov. One by the man himself! I haven’t read any of these plays, just heard good things about them.
- Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin. Onegin is one of my greatest favorite novels of all time (seriously). I’ve read four English translations in the last several years; my personal goal is to read as many translations as I can find!
- ✓ We – Yevgeny Zamyatin. My “read” list is woefully lacking most dystopian classics. This one sounds very interesting, apparently a precursor to 1984.
Yes, I know…no Dostoyevsky. He’ll probably sabotage my list, though; he has a way of cutting in front of the line…
Classics Considered 
Oh, I'm so glad that you're joining too! I think I have Memories of the Future ….. I'd forgotten about it so I should dig it out.Yes, Dostoyevsky tends to intrude even when you don't wish him to. I'm happy that I'm not the only person that he has that effect on ….. 😉
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It'll be super fun! Looks like we have a couple of overlaps (Chekov, We), so we must remember to compare notes. 🙂
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Haha! That Dostoyevsky! He dominated my shelves; so I chose only one of his to read for this challenge, added two other Russian authors, and put the remaining Dostoyevsky to the side to give the others a chance. He can be so pushy sometimes. You have a nice variety of Russian authors. That's what I tried to do, only w/ a shorter list.
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Ah, you've got Gogol, too – I missed him! He's supposed to be another of the \”founding fathers\” of Russian lit, I think. Looking forward to your reviews!
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I love Solzhenitsyn & have had Cancer war sitting on my shelf for a while also. yesterday I found a secondhand copy of the Gulag Archipelago so want to re-read that as it's been a long time since I first read it. I'm in the process of getting my act together to decide what books I'll tackle next year… Great choices!
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I'm joining this too 🙂 We have Chekhov's plays in common – thinking about reading those in the spring. Really looking forward to it!
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