Short Stories in Russian: New Penguin Parallel Text

This book was the perfect gift for a young Russian who is learning English (which seems to be everyone under 30 years old).

Great for side by side reading and checking translation. Perfect for an in-between beginner and intermediate skill level.

Thank you for the book ! Great edition !

Great for higher level learning of the Russian language.

Delivered as Promised

The translators, including editor Baer have done good work on the English language editions of these short stories. However, missing stress markers is only one of several problems. Especially in the Kindle, it does not work to put the Russian and English versions as complete stories following each other. We want to study each sentence and word, so the stories have to be published paragraph by paragraph – unless you can run two devices. The editor states he has selected stories about arms and hands, which is a strange limitation of the riches of Russian literature. It is not followed consistently either, the “Beast” story is rather about a defecating cat and to my mind the worst of a series of stories about endless misery and troubles. I managed to read the “Beast” version in English, but no way I shall risk depression by struggling with this story in Russian! I also disagree about the sequencing of the stories, where the “Arm” towards the end is easier reading than for instance the earlier “Hands” with page after page not separated into paragraphs. This dense text really shows why a thematic choice is a bad way of choosing short stories for pedagogical purposes. It is again both a difficult and a depressing story, about the executing of a dozen priests. The first story in the book “Don’t panic”, science fiction where a grandfather tells his grandson the story shows the kind of principles that work.The dictionary look-up function is a great Kindle tool, but the Russian/English dictionary that can be downloaded to the Kindle is quite inadequate. So many words are missing, especially prefixed Russian verbs, that the program frequently wants to check with Wikipedia, and there these words are not indexed either. I would rather put money into better dictionaries ...

As learning material, this really needs to either have an audio track or stress marks, ideally both. I don't understand why so much Russian "learning" material has neither.

Analisei o conteúdo do livro e parece ser bom. Pena que o papel das páginas é ruim e lembra um jornal.

There are 10 Russian stories with the Russian text on the right and the parallel English translation on the left.The stories are literary works for adults. No simple stories, but often bizar stories with deeper meaning.For me, level B1 (TRKI) in Russian, it was too difficult to comprehend most of the text. I had to look at the translation too often.This book is for advanced readers.

excellent product. excellent service.

Premetto che sono una studentessa di lingua e letteratura russe del 3° anno della triennale. Ho comprato questo libro per leggere in russo, imparare nuove parole e imparare a scrivere in maniera più russeggiante. La scelta dei racconti mi ha attirato immediatamente, dato che adoro gli scrittori che sono stati selezionati.Purtroppo la lettura dei testi è complicata dalla mancanza degli accenti (fruire del libro risulta per tanto noioso, dato che per leggere correttamente parole nuove bisogna andare a consultare il dizionario ogni volta ) e delle dieresi sopra le "e" (ё) (che in russo cambia la pronuncia di tale vocale da "e/i" a "jo"). Per tanto personalmente lo trovo manchevole e utile a metà. Avrebbe potuto avere un uso più immediato!Dico questo considerando che il libro abbia uno scopo più didattico che di svago, vista anche la casa editrice. Se invece avessi frainteso e questo libro fosse solo un'antologia bilingue, allora è comprensibile la mancanza di accenti.

These ten short stories have been chosen carefully with thought, initially with the aim of reflecting the flavour of a "modern" post-USSR literature hopefully freed from the constraints of the Cold War. In the interesting introductory chapter, the editor describes how he found himself choosing the "eternal themes" of Russian literature, albeit with a late Soviet and early post-Soviet twist": problems of war and state-sponsored violence, influence of the past on culture, and conflict between the generations - also a Russian blend of tragedy and humour, and a nuanced sense of morality, in which winners and losers cannot readily be distinguished, all the inevitable outcome of trying to survive in a corrupt and repressive political system.To get the most from this book, one needs a good basic grasp of Russian e.g. familiarity with the meaning of the roots of words to work out the harder vocabulary, so I am saving it for a year or to when I shall be less reliant on the parallel text.