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The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
So, this book! I have rarely read classics which are more than 100 years old and this book was a culture shock for me. What a loquacious book! My exact feelings were why this man is spending 2,3 pages writing the stuff which could have been explained in one paragraph, but then I live in a different era and am brought up with modern literature. it was so different reading paragraphs after paragraphs and pages after pages reading conversations which (from my point of view) were not even important in the narrative; reading them was so tiring. Characters of this book are all very eccentric and uncommon as I can't imagine anyone of them being seen as normal in this generation. It was like experiencing a high energy play with a lot of verbosities.
Dostoyevsky certainly has mastery over words since this book is filled with so elegant sentences and philosophies that one can highlight half the book just for its beauty. Some conversations were eye-openers but some really were over the top. I'm left with mixed feelings about Russian authors as I had a similar experience with Maxim Gorky; but then, maybe it's the culture of a particular country and I am still not evolved yet in a literary sense to appreciate these fully. I'm certainly looking forward to reading more Dostoyevsky and other Russian authors.
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