Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by michaelnlibrarian
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
5.0
I don't read much fiction these days, and often enough I get something home from the (public) library and read 20 pages and take it back. I read this from cover to cover and very much enjoyed it.
I'm sure my background as someone who studied Russia for many years (if not so much now) influence my enthusiasm - in other words, would I have been as interested in the equivalent sort of book about some other country? (Would I have even gone out of my way to _read_ such a book . . . ) Probably not.
Still, it is a well told story. For most Americans, I think Russian history starts with Ivan the Terrible, then takes a jump to Peter the Great, and then probably up to the 1800s somewhere on to Lenin, Stalin, and so on until you get to Putin. This book, set in the 1400s and before Ivan the Terrible adds a dimension to what we can understand about Russia's history and culture aside from the pleasure of the story.
I could have read this book in Russian, but chose to read it in English. Even though my Russian is good, when I read the translator's three page introduction I realized I would get more out of the translation, at least for now, then trying to read the apparently quirky use of Russian, much of which I would have not appreciated. But I felt I could see in the translation some of the unusual mixture of older Russian and newer slang. If such a thing is possible, I felt I had an appreciation for the translator's work without actually consulting the original and without that appreciation interfering with my enjoyment of the work as intended by the author.
Unless one is in a college class where it is required, I don't see any reason to worry about what the author's message or messages might have been (so as to be able to describe them coherently, anyway, to get a grade). Here there is an interesting story in four parts, and in addition I'm pretty sure the author was thinking about and hoped we would think about the nature of time, religion, spirituality, healing, good and evil, and other stuff like that. And I did. Probably not along the lines he might have expected, but then I'm an American and Mr. Vodolazkin is a Russian. I still got something out of it, or so I imagine.
I'm sure my background as someone who studied Russia for many years (if not so much now) influence my enthusiasm - in other words, would I have been as interested in the equivalent sort of book about some other country? (Would I have even gone out of my way to _read_ such a book . . . ) Probably not.
Still, it is a well told story. For most Americans, I think Russian history starts with Ivan the Terrible, then takes a jump to Peter the Great, and then probably up to the 1800s somewhere on to Lenin, Stalin, and so on until you get to Putin. This book, set in the 1400s and before Ivan the Terrible adds a dimension to what we can understand about Russia's history and culture aside from the pleasure of the story.
I could have read this book in Russian, but chose to read it in English. Even though my Russian is good, when I read the translator's three page introduction I realized I would get more out of the translation, at least for now, then trying to read the apparently quirky use of Russian, much of which I would have not appreciated. But I felt I could see in the translation some of the unusual mixture of older Russian and newer slang. If such a thing is possible, I felt I had an appreciation for the translator's work without actually consulting the original and without that appreciation interfering with my enjoyment of the work as intended by the author.
Unless one is in a college class where it is required, I don't see any reason to worry about what the author's message or messages might have been (so as to be able to describe them coherently, anyway, to get a grade). Here there is an interesting story in four parts, and in addition I'm pretty sure the author was thinking about and hoped we would think about the nature of time, religion, spirituality, healing, good and evil, and other stuff like that. And I did. Probably not along the lines he might have expected, but then I'm an American and Mr. Vodolazkin is a Russian. I still got something out of it, or so I imagine.