Air, I need air. That is exactly how I felt when reading the book. This is the third work of Fyodor Dostoevsky that I read. Considered one of his greater works, Crime and Punishment takes you deep into the mind of one of literary world's most fascinating protagonists, Raskolnikov. And all through the reading of... Continue Reading →
A Dostoevskian End to 2014
"Read Russian literature and alienate your friends" This quote that I came across on a T -shirt of a really grumpy looking New York fellow passenger aptly sums my social life of the last two months of 2014. Having purposefully kept myself in the dark about Russian literature I finally gave in and have started bingeing on... Continue Reading →
Translation Troubles
I recently read two translations. The originals I know are popular and revered. The Master and Margarita and The Good Soldier Svejk. However, when I turned the last page of each instead of feeling profoundly moved or inspired, all I felt was a vague sense of disillusionment. A sense that compounds when I realize that I can never... Continue Reading →
The Master and Margarita – Russo-Indian Mirror Images of Censorship
Pardon my scandalous irreverence. I apologize because I am going to say something that I know I am not qualified to state. This book's literary merit is overrated (unless probably one reads it in it's original form). I read the translation of Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor and everything that follows reflects that version. Fantastic Plot... Continue Reading →
The case of a runaway Russian nose
The Nose by Nicolai Gogol is a short work of absurdism and surrealism. A fantastic story about how a Russian official wakes up one morning to find that his Nose has assumed a position in the Russian bureaucracy higher than him. This puts him in a delicate position of requisitioning his nose back to restore his... Continue Reading →
Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky is a name that is not very easy to pronounce. Unless you happen to be one of those who has read him. Then that name attains a halo. So much so that I tried convincing my visiting mother in law that the pesky squirrel she feeds daily (and grows unruly every day, the... Continue Reading →