And Quiet Flows the Don

"You nearly got five Russian books. I am obsessed with their literature. You nearly need a history decoder for this book because it got past Soviet censors by playing up to their interpretation of history. So the Cossacks can be heroic, but they have to lose, and do, to modern industrial Soviet forces of progress. But don’t let that trouble you, the scenes about Cossack village life are some of the best in all literature about rural lives. Think Tolstoy for the early twentieth century, a revolutionary age. The book is a grand, sweeping, historic epic, and earned its author a Nobel Prize. Yes. They are really bloody good. And maybe I like books that explain the giant sweeping forces that shape our lives. These authors weren’t scared to take that on, and write big books. I have a shelf by my writing desk with all the stuff I lean on, have learnt from, or simply aspire to. It has about a hundred books on it, and these ones are there among them. I’m not sure that an author’s opinion about their own work is worth much. But, in all honesty, I try very hard to write stuff that might get on other people’s shelf of good stuff. I have no idea whether I will ever succeed, but I will give it my all. That’s just how I see this game."