Rating: 
Summary: and quiet flows the don
Review: it's good book for reader like me .very interesting
Rating: 
Summary: One of the most graphic and spellbinding books I have read!
Review: Mikhail Sholokov richly deserved his Nobel prize for literature. His literary work in "Quiet Flows the Don" is without doubt one of Russia's masterpieces. His ability to weave a complex and wonderfully graphic tapestry of cossack life before, during, and after Russia's October Revolution is remarkable. His descriptions of the land and the individual lives of the people inhabiting this area of Russia is visually stunning as I read the story images of the characters sprang to mind without effort. The reader will embark on a wonderful journey through a remarkable country at a critical time in human history. Sholokov style and prose is guaranteed to hold the reader captive. He truly is a worthy successor to Lev Tolstoy
Rating: 
Summary: Good in parts
Review: This novel is divided into four parts: "Peace", a description of the lives of Don cossacks on the eve of World War One; "War", the beginnings of World War One, and its impact upon the Don cossacks; "Revolution", the breakdown of the Tsarist state; and "Civil War", events in the Don region immediately following the Revolution.By far the most interesting (and well-written) part for me was "Peace" - the detail was fascinating and it felt authentic. Not for Sholokhov the "rural idyll" - life was brutal, especially for the women, who were treated little better than animals. A theme in the novel which may be missed among the descriptions of warfare is the changing role of the women, how the war emancipated them in certain ways (certainly sexually). Sholokhov's account of the Civil War depicts the brutality of all the participants (somewhat unexpected given my understanding that Sholokhov was a favored author under the Soviet regime). Interesting too was the depiction of attitudes towards the breakdown of central authority: the demise of the Tsarist regime being seen as a chance to break free, to establish independence of the Don region rather than an opportunity to replace one central regime with another. Sholokhov describes the resentment of many towards the Bolsheviks as they attempted to regain control of the Don region - a resentment based primaily on the wish for regional independence. Given the recent disintegration of the Soviet Empire, an interesting part of the novel. I found the parts dealing with the War much less engrossing. It may be because I've recently read Solzhenitsyn's "August 1914" and "November 1916" - so I may be guilty of overdosing on the subject. Sholokhov lacks Solzhenitsyn's ambitious scale (the latter seeks to depict all parts of Russian society from top to bottom in the time leading up to the Revolution). It's no bad thing that Sholokhov is more limited, as frequently when I read Solzhenitsyn I felt that the scale was detrimental to depth and/or insight. Nonetheless, Sholokhov's description of the events experienced by the Don cossacks during the War suffers in comparison to the other parts of his novel - his attention to detail, and to the development of his characters falters, giving way to stacatto descriptions of incidents at the front. As a result, I felt less "connected" with the characters, and wearied with the battlefield heroics. An uneven read, therefore, and probably (in my opinion only perhaps!) deserving its reputation as second-division Russian literature.
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