And Quiet Flows the Don

by Mikhail Sholokhov

Overview

WINNER OF NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE, 1965

WINNER OF THE STALIN PRIZE, 1941 

Mikhail Sholokhov’s groundbreaking epic novel gives a sweeping depiction of Russian life and culture in the early 20th century. In the same vein as War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, And Quiet Flows the Don gives readers a glimpse into many aspects of Russian culture, and the choices a country makes when faced with war and destruction.

In his enormous epic of Cossack life during the Revolution...Mikhail Sholokhov has achieved even greater power, sustained narrative gift and stirring human truthfulness.”—New York Times
 
“In addition to its panoramic grandeur, the wealth of its characters and its historic realism, Sholokhov's book is memorable for its portrayal of the primitive and already almost legendary life of the Don Cossacks.”—Malcolm Cowley, New Republic

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679725213
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/17/1989
Series:	Vintage International Series
Edition description:	1st Vintage international ed
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	157,087
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mikhail Sholokov was born in 1905 in a village in the Don region, of a family that had been living there for many generations. Despite poverty, he was able to attend school in Moscow. At the age of fifteen he returned to his native village to become a schoolteacher, then a statistician, a food inspector, and held various other jobs. He began writing when he was eighteen years old. Today he is the Soviet Union's most famous and widely honored living novelist. And Quiet Flows the Don was published in 1928 in the Soviet Union, and in the United States in 1934. Its sequel, The Don Flows Home to the Sea (available in Vintage Books), was finished in 1939, and appeared in America in 1940. Although each is complete in itself, the two books are often referred to under the title The Silent Don. Other volumes by Sholokov that have been translated into English are Harvest on the Don, Seeds of Tomorrow, and Tales of the Don. In 1965 Mr. Sholokov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Editorial Reviews

Sholokhov has achieved even greater power, sustained narrative gift, and stirring human truthfulness.”

New York Times

In addition to its panoramic grandeur, the wealth of its characters and its historic realism, Sholokhov’s book is memorable for its portrayal of the primitive and already almost legendary life of the Don Cossacks.”

New Republic

Stefan Rudnicki uses his rich and resonant timbre, commanding tone, and deep empathy to bring this 1928 masterwork of twentieth-century Russian literature to life…Rudnicki captures the no-nonsense pride of a Cossack when one character announces to the old veterans and soon-to-be-widows that he’d prefer riding into battle against the Germans swinging a saber to carrying a lowly pistol. A tour de force of love, loss, and honor in pre-Revolutionary Russia.”

AudioFile

Stefan Rudnicki uses his rich and resonant timbre, commanding tone, and deep empathy to bring this 1928 masterwork of twentieth-century Russian literature to life. It is shortly before the First World War, and the Cossack peoples of the Don River Valley are raising crops, raising families, and sometimes raising Cain while waiting to be called forth to do what they do best—fight in the name of and for the glory of the Czar. Rudnicki captures the no-nonsense pride of a Cossack when one character announces to the old veterans and soon-to-be-widows that he’d prefer riding into battle against the Germans swinging a saber to carrying a lowly pistol. A tour de force of love, loss, and honor in pre-Revolutionary Russia. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2020 - AudioFile