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charlie68 A book that also captures war and all its extremities.
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After enjoying the first book of the series, 'Quiet Flows the Don' I thought that I would tackle the next in the series which follows directly on from the first volume with the same characters and shows how their lives continue after the events of the first book. The earlier parts of the book are set against the backdrop of the Civil War and we get to see the effects of this traumatic period on the characters in the village. Later after a short peace a brutal repression by the Bolsheviks the Cossacks of the Don decide to revolt against their authority.
Whilst the love affair between Gregor and Aksinia is less intense and less exciting I actually found this book marginally more enjoyable than its predecessor. This is mainly because there show more are far fewer characters instead centring on Gregor and the wider Melekhov family circle whereas there was a far larger array of characters in thee first book which sometimes made it hard to follow what was happening and to whom.
Once again Sholokhov paints a wonderful vision of Cossack life on the steppes of Russia it is a hard and at times brutal life yet there is also laughter and joy. You can visualise their lives. Without wanting to give the ending away, like so many Russian novels there are no sugary happy endings here.But perhaps again what is most remarkable is that he was allowed to publish this book at all because it is hardly flattering to either side in the Civil War both sides were guilty of what today would be regarded as 'War crimes'. This is not an easy read but a worthwhile one. show less
Whilst the love affair between Gregor and Aksinia is less intense and less exciting I actually found this book marginally more enjoyable than its predecessor. This is mainly because there show more are far fewer characters instead centring on Gregor and the wider Melekhov family circle whereas there was a far larger array of characters in thee first book which sometimes made it hard to follow what was happening and to whom.
Once again Sholokhov paints a wonderful vision of Cossack life on the steppes of Russia it is a hard and at times brutal life yet there is also laughter and joy. You can visualise their lives. Without wanting to give the ending away, like so many Russian novels there are no sugary happy endings here.But perhaps again what is most remarkable is that he was allowed to publish this book at all because it is hardly flattering to either side in the Civil War both sides were guilty of what today would be regarded as 'War crimes'. This is not an easy read but a worthwhile one. show less
It hits all the classic tropes of a war epic. The guts and the blood and a tinge of the glory, against the scene of the home front.
This book follows on from And Quiet Flows the Don' and continues the story of Gregor Melekov and his family in the village of Tatarsk during the long period of unrest following WW1. It is a long book, sad and often cruel. Interspersed with the cruelty are wonderful descriptions of the Don countryside and beauty of the seasons.
DJ has issues, but VG overall cond.
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Author Information
289+ Works 3,835 Members
For decades a pillar of the Soviet literary establishment, Sholokhov owes his stature to And Quiet Flows the Don (1928--40), a four-volume epic of the life and fate of the Don Cossacks in the Revolution and civil war. Although himself a party member, Sholokhov depicts fairly impartially both sides in the conflict between the Reds and the Whites show more and shows how his hero, Grigory Melekhov, is driven by background and fate from one camp to the other. This realistic novel captures the exotic Cossack milieu superbly, and the whole works on a scale unseen since Tolstoy's War and Peace. Among Sholokhov's later works, Virgin Soil Upturned (1932--60), which deals with the collectivization of agriculture, deserves particular mention; the first volume is far more direct and honest than the much-later second volume. Over the years, Sholokhov's authorship of And Quiet Flows the Don has been questioned, most recently by Solzhenitsyn, but Sholokhov has had strong defenders in both the Soviet Union and the West. His political stance accounts for part of the anger directed against him. Extremely conservative, Sholokhov made vicious attacks on dissidents and the West and, aside from his concern for environmental issues, was a devoted follower of the party line. Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Don Flows Home to the Sea
- Original publication date
- 1940; 1941-08-08 (English: Garry) (English: Garry)
- Important events
- Russian Civil War
- First words
- Long lines of trucks rolled from the Don through the Ukraine, carrying white flour, butter, eggs, and cattle to Germany.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)This was all life had left to him, all that for a little longer gave him kinship with the earth and with the spacious world which lay glittering under the chilly sun.
Classifications
- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 891.7 — Literature & rhetoric Asian Literature East Indo-European and Celtic literatures Russian and East Slavic languages
- LCC
- PZ3 .S55854 .D — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction in English
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 360
- Popularity
- 87,229
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (4.28)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 22
