Russian Reading Challenge Roundup

For the Russian Reading Challenge we had to read at least four books related to Russia between January 1 and December 31, 2008. That was an easy target for me as I had a lot more books on Russia on my TBR-pile. The year ended up being very much colored by my reading for this challenge, but that was not a problem at all! I ended up reading sixteen books for this challenge and almost all of them were worth reading. In fact my two non-fiction favorites of 2008 are on the list. I have only two Russia-related books left on my TBR-pile, which I plan to read this year.

These are the books I read for the Russian Reading Challenge in 2008 (links are to my reviews):
* Orlando Figes – The Whisperers
* Simon Sebag Montefiore – Young Stalin
* Fazil Iskander – Tali, Het wonder van Tsjegem (Tali, The Miracle of Chegem)
* Vassily Aksyonov – Generations of Winter
* Факко & Сакко не теряют надежды – Reid, Geleijnse & Van Tol
* Corine de Vries – Dansen in een strafkamp
* Pieter Waterdrinker – Montagne Russe
* Anna Brouwer – Land van gebroken beloftes: Dochters van Rusland
* Anne Applebaum – Gulag: A History
* Jelle Brandt Corstius – Rusland voor gevorderden: Berichten van een overlever
* Edward Rutherfurd – Russka
* Tom Rob Smith – Child 44
* Åsne Seierstad – The Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya
* Chaim Potok – The Gates of November (De familie Slepak)
* Laura Starink – De Russische kater
* Peter d’Hamecourt – Russen zien ze vliegen

There were a couple of books I read but didn’t review. They are Факко & Сакко не теряют надежды (Fokke and Sukke won’t loose hope), a Dutch comic translated into Russian. It was not really a book or a novel, but it was a quick and fun read. It was interesting to see how the Dutch jokes and blunt sense of humor of  the comic had been translated into Russian. Some worked very well, but other jokes kind of lost the edge they have in the Dutch language.

I didn’t review Pieter Waterdrinker’s Montagne Russe either. Initially I didn’t get around to it and then I realized that I didn’t have much to say about the book as I found it rather repetitive. It is a collection of short stories and essays by a Dutch writer/journalist living in Russia. It won’t be a surprise then that this was the book I liked least. You can read an excerpt in English here.

The other two books I didn’t review were actually rather good, both of them. I had planned to write about them, but then I postponed that too long so I don’t really remember what I wanted to write.

Chaim Potok’s The Gates of November (De familie Slepak in Dutch) is a biography of Volodya and Masha Slepak, a Jewish couple who became leaders in the refusenik-dissident movement in the 1970s and 80s in the Soviet Union. Chaim Potok is my favorite writer ever and I used to reread his books regularly when I was still living in Holland. His book The Promise is my favorite ever book, the only book I would reread every year. I miss reading his books, so next time I am in Holland I will dig into my bookstacks and bring some of his books back with me. It is high time for a reread. Though Gates of November is not my favorite Potok (I think this is partly because I read the book in Dutch translation, which was good but nothing like reading Potok in English), I still thoroughly enjoyed reading it and highly recommend it. Jew Wishes has a more extensive review on her blog here.
The final book I didn’t get around to reviewing was Åsne Seierstad’s The Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya. Seierstad is a Norwegian journalist who became well-known as the author of the controversial The Bookseller of Kabul. She lived in Grozny, the capital of war-torn Chechnya, illegally in 2006 and 2007. Seierstad writes a gripping account of what life is like for ordinary people in a country ruined by war and where, despite Russia’s official stance that the war is over, a simmering conflict is still going on, fueled in large part by the Russia-backed president Ramzan Kadyrov and his private army of Kadyrovtsy. Seierstad focuses on the inhabitants of the orphanage where she lives during her stays in Grozny, and especially on the children who grew up only knowing war and violence. Seierstad’s writing and her compassion for ordinary people suffering from the violence in Chechnya reminded me of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s writing on Chechnya. If the subject interests you, I highly recommend The Angel of Grozny.

Though, as I said, I thoroughly enjoyed the large majority of the books I read for my challenge, there were two that stood out easily: The Whisperers and Gulag. They are easily my two favorite non-fiction reads of last year. In fact, The Whisperers was one of the first books I read in 2008 and already then I knew that it would end high in the list of favorite books of the year.

Thanks so much, Sharon, for hosting this challenge! It was easily the favorite challenge I participated in last year.