What's On - Russian Literature with Antony Black

Life and love were explored by Tolstoy (1828-1910), Dostoevsky (1821-81), Bulgakov (1891-1940) and Grossman (1905-64) in their novels, and by Shalamov (1907-82) in his gulag reminiscences, with a gut-wrenching sincerity, sometimes in circumstances harsher than we can imagine. `’My mother always taught me to be moral and honest, to live a life of truth, as preached by the great Russian writers’ (Valentin Muravsky, 1954). They wrote from different perspectives: Tolstoy became an independent dissenter, Dostoevsky was devoutly Orthodox, the others more or less non-religious. We examine especially Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Grossman’s Life and Fate.

Information published by Leisure and Culture Dundee.