Customer Reviews

Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book

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This dual-language book features twelve shortstories by 19th-century masters of Russian literature. The pages are specially formatted with Russian Cyrillic on the left opposed by English translation on the right. The Russian and English texts match eachother nearly line-for-line, simplifying cross-reference. Here is an entertaining way to enrich vocabulary and perfect syntax, for the intermediate to advanced student who already has the basics of grammar. The editor chose some great examples of Russian writing, including Pushkin's haunting "Stationmaster", Gogol's grotesque "Nose", and Dostoevski's macabre graveyard drama "Bobok". Only one thing detracts from the book's usefulness as a learning tool, which is that many of the phrases and expressions are somewhat archaic. There are several dual-language compilations of contemporary (Soviet) shortstories available, for those who prefer to familiarize themselves with more modern language usage.

With stories by Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol and Chekov this is a great book to help you improve your Russian skills and read the masterworks in the original. It's a great way to check your Russian against the English tranlsation on the opposite page.

The book itself has been around for several years and while it is a bit expensive for what you get used editions are fairly common. My only real criticism is that this is one of the few dual readers available in the US on the Russian language. Hopefully the publishers will remedy this by printing another volume. A real must for Russian language students.

This book is a wonderful rare find. I am a friend/neighbor of highly educated recent Russian immigrants with limited expertise in English. Although they are taking English classes, it is almost impossible for them to find interesting books to read in English beyond those of a childrens book reading level. Having to use a Russian/English dictionary while reading eliminates a lot of the simple pleasures that reading provides. This book's dual language format is absolutely perfect. They can finally enjoy a book written in English that reflects their reading interests due to the fact that the exact Russian version resides on the opposing page. This dual language format is also an absolutely perfect tool for English students learning the Russian language. It gave me so much pleasure to provide them with this opportunity to both practice and better enjoy reading books in English. I only wish that there were a lot more books available in this style for my friends to enjoy....

This book works on two levels: One, these short stories are by the Russian masters of the genre. In English translation, they are powerful, evocative, and moving, on their own. There is a reason why Pushkin, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky are still popular: Those guys didn't write any garbage. They set the bar for all writers as high as it could go. I would especially recommend "Sleepy" by Anton Chekhov. Read it on Halloween night, as I did, for a good old fashioned fright.

Secondarily, for those of us learning Russian, these short stories provide fascinating and very challenging works to translate. Be advised, this is a high level of Russian literature, written for educated and literate native speakers, so it's a big challenge. Pack a lunch.

The short story format is especially beneficial. If you can get through one story, believe me, you are ready for the psychological reward of starting a new story.

I bought this book as part of my ongoing acquisition of the Russian language. The layout is excellent and typical of these types of book; the stories are well selected and entertaining, with a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical usage.

But...

Anyone wanting to use this book as a booster to their contemporary Russian language skills should bear in mind that a Russian person learning English would not be best served by heading for the library and taking down Dickens, Tennyson, and Gaskill. Languages shift, change, and evolve and today's spoken Russian is as different from that of Gogol as English in San Francisco is different from that of Thackerey. Arguably the English spoken in San Francisco is fairly nasty ("He was like, that was so totally awsome, and I was like, cool...") because it is imprecise and unfocused and in fact fails to convey much meaning; nevertheless a solid grounding in Henry James wouldn't prepare someone for a close encounter with the local natives of the Sunset District. Likewise, the stories here won't really help you much with contemporary Russian as spoken by a teenage girl in Peter or a xenophobic hoodie near Red Square.

But as a pleasure in itself, this book is a gem and a worthwhile addition to the library of anyone who is just establishing a beach-head in the language.

That's what this is, the perfect language learning tool for a student of the russian language, with one or two years of college level russian who wants to continue their study of the language. I would be surprised if universities did not use this text for intermediate level students. The only thing more that I could wish for would be an audio version of this book, which would help me to consolidate, and strengthen the knowledge it gave me, by allowing me to listen to the stories it contains in Russian, as well as being able to read them.

Got this book a while ago, its way too hard for me for my level but the good thing is you can work through at a slow pace and still get a lot out of it. Stress marks are very helpful, would have been useless to me without them basically, and the glossary is also helpful although it doesn't include everything (good to have a dictionary nearby). Layout is good, that is, having the english on the adjacent page, makes for very easy reference to the english. Archaic language is usually noted and explained as such, which is useful. Great for reading practice, highly recommendable book for all skill levels (i have only been learning for around 6 months but have still got a lot out of it so far). Good selection of stories and enough to keep an beginner reader going for a long time!

As a long time student of Russian, I have found it very difficult to lay hands on dual language books like this one. On the left page is the original Russian text, and on the right is a corresponding (and very well rendered) English translation. The true beauty of this volume, though, is that the modern translation provides a bridge to the literary style from the age of the masters like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and my personal favorite, Gogol, among many others. An even dozen stories allow intermediate to advanced Russian speakers to deepen their familiarity with this particular subset of the language. I would love to have many more books like this one. Highly recommended.

I am a native Russian speaker and as an advanced learner of English I found this book amazingly useful. It spurs your curiosity to first read the original Russian text and then see how Prof. Struve goes about translating the endless archaisms and idiosyncrasies of the 19-th century Russian.

Kudos to Prof. Struve!

you can make this as easy or as challenging as you like. You learn words when they keep popping up in the stories