2021: My Russian Classic Literature Reading Highlights

Posted on January 5, 2022 Updated on January 5, 2022

2021 is another successful year for an extra-introverted bookworm who enjoys social distancing, and an efficient minimalist who can survive on a negligible budget. In 2021 I managed to finish nearly 28 books (excluding the academic reads, of course – I’m very serious about not mixing work’s reads with purposeful reads). Different from the “transcendent” year of 2020 when my most favorite centered around enlightening philosophy (Autobiography of a Yogi, Autobiography of Mohandas Gandhi – see my previous post), in 2021 I focused primarily on classic fiction, specifically European literature, among which, the 19th century and early 20th century Russian classics are the highlights. I fortunately got to read Pushkin, Gogol, (more of) Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Bulgakov, and I was completely awed by the philosophical and psychological ideology in many of the works. For those who wish to start on Russian classics but do not know where to begin, I suggest following this list which I also find very helpful.

Below are some of my most notable Russian classic reads of the year, listed in the chronological order. I read them all in Vietnamese as I believe that the Vietnamese translation of Russian classic (mostly done by reputable Vietnamese writers and researchers who lived through our socialist bonding decades) is better than a random English version that comes to my hand.

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