My first ever trip to Russia soon – a few days in St Petersburg - so I have been looking out a few relevant books. They include J M Coetzee’s Master of St Petersburg, the short story collection A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia by Victor Pelevin, You Will Hear Thunder, a collection of poetry by Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich (a real trip back into my teenage past), and mafia thriller Dead Meat by Philip Kerr. I should of course read some Dostoevsky, but I was attracted by the virtues of brevity and novelty, so I have left even Crime and Punishment at home. Another option would be Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, an autobiographical work covering his St Petersburg childhood.
Dead Meat left me completely unstirred and slightly revolted, so I abandoned the violence and the mafia after 50 pages. Of the others, you'll hear more!
Any other ideas?
I nearly went to St Petersburg when I was a teenager (on a school trip). My parents found this book for me in one of the innumerable 2nd hand bookshops that existed in Edinburgh in those days: "Fred Markham in Russia". Written by WHG Kingston and first published in 1858 it may not be as useful as the ones you list, and it is very much in the derring-do spirit of adventure. However it was written just after travel by foreigners to Russia became at all possible and Fred does indeed go to St Petersberg so you might find it of historic interest.
Posted by: Dark Puss | Monday, 29 June 2009 at 08:54 AM