This massive novel is worth a read if you are curious about Cossack culture at the start of World War One and through the later Russian Revolution in 1917 and the civil war that followed.
Cossacks were a proud group of farmers on the Don river who wanted their own local government instead of belonging to a new Soviet collective government. This book looks at the privations of war for the Cossack regiments in WW1 as well as a series of personal stories about the key characters that run through the entire novel.
Names are challenging, so I have prepared some notes outlining the main dozen characters in the caste of about 100. As well there is a short synopsis of the first two books that can help readers get into the plot lines.
Cossacks were a proud group of farmers on the Don river who wanted their own local government instead of belonging to a new Soviet collective government. This book looks at the privations of war for the Cossack regiments in WW1 as well as a series of personal stories about the key characters that run through the entire novel.
Names are challenging, so I have prepared some notes outlining the main dozen characters in the caste of about 100. As well there is a short synopsis of the first two books that can help readers get into the plot lines.
'And Quiet Flows the Don' is worth a read – the author won a Nobel Prize for Literature for it -- but settle down with a glass of wine on the long winter nights for this novel.
Meg Dillon
Coming up in June: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bolgakov (1940). "Farce about Moscow life in the 1930s. Slapstick fantasy defying Russian gloom."
Meg Dillon
Coming up in June: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bolgakov (1940). "Farce about Moscow life in the 1930s. Slapstick fantasy defying Russian gloom."