My reading: the choice of Nifont Dolgopolov

Snowstorm Vladimir Sorokin

The story begins in the style of a realistic story of the XNUMXth century about Dr. Platon Ilyich, rushing, despite a snowstorm, to the sick inhabitants of a distant village … But gradually the author invades my consciousness with phantasmagoric «details» of the journey — now horses the size of a partridge, on which the doctor rides, then pyramids – super-drugs, which “Eastern” people treat him on the way… I barely have time to integrate “super-reality” into something whole and meaningful, but, having coped, I feel how my ability to create increases.

AST, Astrel, 304 p.

«Anna Karenina» Leo Tolstoy

At school, and even at a later time, I did not have the patience to master the entire epic novels of Tolstoy. But the film meeting of Wright’s Anna — Keira Knightley, and Solovyovskaya Anna — Tatyana Drubich warmed up my curiosity and desire to re-read Tolstoy. This time, I was fascinated not so much by the plot of the triangle Karenin — Vronsky — Karenin, but by the diversity and interconnectedness of the world in which they exist. Interestingly, with such a change in attitude, my reader’s excitement did not weaken with any «wanderings» of the author — whether it was a trip to the village or a description of the world of trotters.

Alphabet, 864 p.

«A Year in Provence» by Peter Mail

This book was brought to me by a friend when I was in the hospital, and on a rather stingy diet. At first, the description of the life of a married couple of English «immigrants» in a farmhouse in Provence, full of gastronomic excursions into the local cuisine, seemed to me blasphemously inappropriate for my condition. But gradually I immersed myself in the light, witty poetry of the author’s language and did not even notice how I swallowed with pleasure three hundred pages of extremely tasty text on the topic «This is what could please you, reader, if you bought a house in the south of France.»

Translation from English by Irina Pander. Amphora, 304 p.

«First in the Bible» Meir Shalev

I like the original author’s move: since the Bible is a “book of principles”, then any phenomenon can be viewed from the point of view of primacy in biblical texts. This is how the author’s research about “first love”, “first dream”, “first animals”, “first loving” unfolds (which, as the author explains, in the entire Bible, unlike “loving men”, exists only in a single copy! ). Meir Shalev brilliantly reads ancient texts — carefully and scrupulously, offering his own cultural and psychological interpretation of this or that phenomenon. And his correctness is worthy of admiration and imitation.

Translation from Jewish by Raphael Nudelman and Alla Furman. Text, 416 p.

«Summer Deceptions» by Bernhard Schlink

Seven stories. The German writer involuntarily but deeply draws us into the world of intimate relationships between men, women, parents and children. Graceful deployment of the fabric of consciousness of the heroes, masterful clarity and laconicism in describing external events. The inevitability of love deceit and avoidance of intimacy fills me with warm sadness both in the stories of the characters in the book and in the rolling memories of my own relationships.

Translation from German by Inna Streblova and Galina Snezhinskaya. Alphabet, 288 p.