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Kreitserova sonata Leo N. Tolstoy publisher: , 1890 translated as: Kreutzer Sonata publisher: Querido, Amsterdam, 2003 translation: Isai Kamen –› Excerpt refered to by: A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess Virtuoso, The Margriet de Moor
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summary: When Pozdnyshev suspects his wife of having an affair with her music partner, his jealousy consumes him and drives him to murder. |
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| ON TOLSTOY'S BOOKSHELF The Iliad Homer, ca. 750 v.Chr. Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its centre is Achilles' withdrawal from the fighting and his return to kill the Trojan hero, Hector. The tragic events are interwoven with moving descriptions of the ebb and flow of battle. Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852 The story follows the life and vissitudes of Uncle Tom, a noble negro, and portrays the humanity of an enslaved black people and the moral evil of their enslavement. (Tolstoy said it was better than King Lear.) Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol, 1842 Russian 'critical realism'. In this quintessentially Russian novel, the reader follows Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned con-man, through the countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise. Oblomov Ivan Goncharov, 1859 Russian 'critical realism'. Written with sympathetic humour and compassion, Oblomov made Goncharov famous throughout Russia on its publication in 1859, as readers saw in this story of a man whose defining characteristic is indolence, the portrait of an entire class in decline. Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev, 1862 Russian 'critical realism'. Arkady Petrovitch returns from college under the spell of a young nihilist called Bazarov, a character who shocked Arkady's father and the Russian public of 1862 with his criticisms of the traditional values of Russian society. In Bazarov, Turgenev created the prototype 'angry young man'. Vanity Fair William Thackeray, 1847-1848 In Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, the advantaged Amelia Smedley is in stark contrast to the poor, but sharp-witted Becky Sharp. However, fate is not always kind as their lives become entwined with the likes of the coarse bully, Sir Pitt Crawley and his brother. Bleak House Charles Dickens, 1852-1853 A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens' s most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums. Emile: or, On Education Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762 This is Rousseau's influential, fictional treatise on education, whose doctrine of the return to nature led to the book's condemnation by the Paris Parlement and to Rousseau's subsequent exile from France. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal, 1839 Follows the adventures of young Fabrizio del Dongo as he joins Napoleon's army just before Waterloo and struggles to keep hidden his love for Clelia amid the intrigues and secrets of the small court of Parma. The Mill on the Floss George Eliot, 1860 As Maggie Tulliver approaches adulthood, her spirited temperament brings her into conflict with her family, her community, and her much-loved brother Tom. Still more painfully, she finds her own nature divided between the claims of moral responsibility and her | BOOKS BY LEO N. TOLSTOY: War and Peace (1864-1869) This massive chronicle, to which Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) devoted five whole years shortly after his marriage, portrays Russian family life during and after the Napoleonic war. | WHAT TO READ AFTER WAR AND PEACE? EPIC SOCIAL NOVELS Les misérables Victor Hugo, 1862 France in the first quarter of the 19th century: Jean Valjean, a poor man, steals a loaf of bread and then spends years trying to escape his reputation as a criminal. In later years he rises to become a respectable member of society; but policeman Javert will not allow him to forget his past. Rebellion in the Backlands Euclides da Cunha, 1902 Examining the brutal campaign against religious mystic Antonio Conselheiro and his rebels, this work is an account of the resistance of the backland natives at the seige of Canudos in 1896-1897, and a treatise on the geography, climatology and anthropology of Brazil's back countries and peoples. The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni, 1825-1827 Set in Lombardy in the years 1628-30, The Betrothed tells the tale of two young lovers in a time of war, famine, and plague. U.S.A. John Dos Passos, 1930-1936 In this experimental trilogy, Dos Passos uses 'camera eye' and 'newsreel' sections to create a fragmented atmosphere. Through the testimony of numerous characters, both fictional and historical figures, he builds up a composite picture of American society in the first quarter of the 20th century. Generations of Winter Vassily Aksyonov, 1992 Follows the lives and fortunes of members of the Gradov family of Moscow through the turbulent years of 1928 to 1945, through Stalin's rise in the 1930s and the terror of World War II. LOVE IN TIMES OF WAR A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway, 1929 This is the story of Lieutenant Henry, an American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. The two meet in Italy, and almost immediately Hemingway sets up the central tension of the novel: the tenuous nature of love in a time of war. Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell, 1936 The story of the tempestuous romance between Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara is set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Civil War. Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak, 1957 Epic novel of post-revolutionary Russia focuses on the torments and dreams of a doctor-poet who attempts to avoid the struggles of his turbulent era. RUSSIA UNDER THE TSAARS The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, 1880 Three sons find their violent and vengeful lives exposed when their despicable father is murdered, and each man struggles to come to terms with his guilt over his involvement in the crime. Michael Strogoff: a Courier of the Czar Jules Verne, 1876 While in the service of Alexander II, Michael Strogoff faces almost insurmountable obstacles as he carries a message from Moscow to Irkutsk during the time of a Tatar rebellion. Foma Gordeyev Maxim Gorky, 1899 Gorky's first novel illustrates his admiration for strength of body and will in the masterful barge owner and rising capitalist Ignat Gordeyev, who is contrasted with his relatively feeble and intellectual son Foma, a 'seeker after the meaning of life'. The Life of Arseniev: Youth Ivan Bunin, 1933 Arseniev is born into the shabby gentry (like Bunin) and weathers youth's storms in the heart of his loving yet eccentric family. |
| [Oorlogsverhalen] 1856 | ||
| Anna Karenina 1877 Anna Karenina abandons her empty existence as a society wife and embarks on a doomed love affair with the passionate but emotionally bankrupt Vronsky. | ||
| The Death of Ivan Ilyich 1886 The physical decline and spiritual awakening of a worldly, successful man who is faced with his own mortality. Only in his last agonizing moments does Ivan Ilyich finally confront his true nature, and gain the forgiveness of his wife and son for his cruelty towards them. | ||
| Kreutzer Sonata 1890 –› Excerpt When Pozdnyshev suspects his wife of having an affair with her music partner, his jealousy consumes him and drives him to murder. | ||
| Hadji Murat 1904 (posthumous) It is 1852 and Hadji Murat is one of the most feared mountain chiefs and the scourge of the Russian army. When he comes to surrender, the Russians are delighted. Or have they naively welcomed a double-agent into their midst? | ||
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