Quiet Flows the Don [Hardcover]

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (Author), Brian Murphy (Author, Editor), Robert Daglish (Author, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

The first complete and uncensored edition of one of the great Russian epics of the 20th century by a Nobel Prize-winning author contains an introduction, notes, and comprehensive background essays for this panoramic fictional chronicle of twentieth-century Russian history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first complete and uncensored edition of Quiet Flows the Don, by Nobel Prize winner Mikhal Sholokhov, is being released in two volumes. This Russian epic, set during the turbulent years of WWI, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War gained instant notoriety for its objectivity and human sympathy. This new edition, revised and edited by Brian Murphy and translated by Robert Daglish, provides introductory notes and comprehensive background essays.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965, the late Soviet author is best known for this gigantic epic in which he sought to correct the unfavorable image of the Don Cossacks. With World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War as backdrop, it's an old-fashioned, blood-and-guts narrative, filled with earthly humor and a wealth of colorful characters. The story concerns the fluctuating fortunes of Grigory Melekhov, a young Cossack who is both a hero and a victim of the uprising. This new edition, advertised as being "complete and uncensored," is agreeably readable-a major plus given the work's length and complex scope-although the dialog sometimes offers an incongruous mix of Briticisms (e.g., blighters and buggers) and backwoods American expressions (mebbe not and baccy). The editor, a Slavonic scholar, provides a valuable introduction, notes, bibliography, and background essays. This new edition is highly recommended for all libraries with strong Slavic collections and for any library where a good story is enjoyed, regardless of length.
Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1362 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786703601
• ISBN-13: 978-0786703609
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,296,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First complete edition in English, December 5, 2003

By 

William J. Rigby - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quiet Flows the Don (Hardcover)

Sholokhov's mighty work came out in English in the early 1950s if I recall; it may have been late 1940s. The translation was incomplete and the title was "And Quiet Flows the Don". A sequel came out under the title, "The Don flows Home to the Sea", both published by Wishart and Lawrence, a UK publisher with the courage to sponsor such works. Neither volume I now learn reflected accurately what Sholokhov wrote.
When the 1996 translation appeared, brilliantly executed and edited, I snapped it up immediately and also sent a copy to a former spouse in Europe. I read Sholokhov's first work as a teenager and still recall the inability to put the book down as well as being emotionally shocked at several sections of the narrative.
I came across this page in seeking any book by Professor Murphy since he has written extensively on the Cossacks and Sholokhov; re-reading the book raises my curiosity to learn more about that region of the former USSR and its inhabitants. I take the opportunity to recommend a rattling good read that provides an inside view of life in the pre-revolutionary Don basin and a rather well balanced view of the revolution and the civil war. Yes, yes, the hero Stokman is a little too upright and heroic as a communist and yes, the kulak/capitalist Molkhov a little too villainous... but these were small pecadillos when the book was written. If the model of Stokman was intended to inspire readers, they could have had far worse models!
The work did not earn the author the Nobel literature prize for nothing!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking, September 16, 2004

By 

Ian Clark (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: And Quiet Flows the Don (Paperback)

With this book Sholokov has created an absolute masterpiece that not only vividly recreates the world of the Don Cossacks, but slowly, agonizingly, shows how the Great War and the subsequent Civil Wars savaged that world, leaving nothing untouched. Amazingly for a book written during Soviet times, it slips the stink of propoganda: the Cossacks, sometimes choosing sides arbitrarily, massacres each other with numbing disregard for ideology. Sholokov couples the tragic sweep of events with a artist's eye for detail, loving recreating the pastoral pre-War Eden, and soberly describing the smoking ruins that envelope it. Perhaps the book becomes slightly overlong in the second volume, but that is a small price to pay for something so splendid.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A literary monument, October 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Quiet Flows the Don (Hardcover)

This is the second time I've read this thousand over page tome and it's truly magnificent. The greatest Russian/Soviet novel this century. Sholokhov is in the ranks of Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky. An intensely beautiful, powerful and action filled tale of heroes in a land changed forever by war and revolution.