Hey, first time ever on this board, I need help with an assignment

That's stupid, just get something short like Notes From Underground.

>>8580752
listen to this guy op, notes from underground is a good choice

>>8580740
>I need help with an assignment for high school
>>>/hm/ Homework Help

>>8580752
This. Or even quicker, read a Gogol short story or something. Why does it have to be a book?

>>8580740
No. Read the entirety of a shorter book.

>>8580752

this.

>A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov
>The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy
>Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov

After you realize the godliness of Russian lit, read all the classics.

>>8580757
>>8580752
Someone already has that, we aren't allowed to double up, I'm kind of stuck with War and Peace. However the assignment isn't really heavily based on the book itself. Half of it is a keynote with 3 literary devices from the piece we've read and the other half is an essay on something about the piece we've read. I.e. some social or pschological takeaway.

>>8580776
Anyone got Death of Ivan Ilyich?

>>8580876
We already read that as a class at the beginning of the year

>>8580740
roadside picnic

>>8580776
Hadji Murat. Short novella by Tolstoy which is probably the best thing he ever wrote. A lot to say about his presentation related to current conflicts in the Middle East.

>>8580740
>>8580876
>>8581070
>>8581128

this

or READ FUCKING BUNIN OR TURGENEV OR SOLZHENITSYN OR LERMONTOV

theres two dozen well known 100-300 page russian books yet you elect to skim war and fucking peace


read the fucking wikipedia article for w&p then and then the chapters at borodino or prince andrei at austerlitz or bezhukov bumbling around somewhere or natasha being wooed by kuragin in the theatre ... why would one choose war and peace if one wants to do as little as possible?!

>>8580774
>Ivan ilych

Mint Patrician tier

>>8580740
Read Dead Souls by Gogol. Widely considered to be the first Russian novel and will give you perfect insight into what people mean when they say 'Russian novel'. You don't even need to read two chapters to get a grasp of what characterizes the Russian style of writing.

What do you guys think about Life & Fate? In general.

>>8583365
>Widely considered to be the first Russian novel
What a stupid sentence. Being the first novel isn't a matter of opinion, it's an objective fact. It is or it isn't. And it isn't, because Hero of Our Time was published two years earlier, and I'm sure someone who knows russian lit better can find an even older one.
Dead Souls is a relatively long book anyway, op has to do the report by Friday.

>>8580776
Read Gogol. A short story, like Nose or Overcoat or Diary of a Madman, can be read in a day, is fun, and lends itself to analysis. (Overcoat influenced the following realist writers, quote Dostoevsky, Nose is surrealistic etc etc)

>>8583572
Not necessarily. The style of a genre may develop over time, and Dead Souls could be considered the first Russian novel to capture the quintessence of the genre, hence making it the 'first' Russian novel.