skybridge

remysharp.com · @remysharp.com@bridge.neodb.net

Rated We 6/10

Beautiful prose but no idea what it was about!<br/><i></i><br/>I've been collecting both recommendations and books that "we should have read" and it's really amazing to find that this book was written in the 1920s, before 1984 and A Brave New World.<br/><br/>The book was originally written in Russian and banned from publication for many decades. The version I've read is apparently a faithful and good translation but I do always wonder if the language has been modified or not (in one section I found a reference to electric toothbrushes - something that was invented some 30 years later).<br/><br/>None the less, the words to this book really are poetry.<br/><br/>The problem I had is that I really wasn't sure where I was in the story. The character thinks he's going insane, but he's actually discovering he has a soul, but often it did read like a madman and hallucinations.<br/><br/>It does end predictably, but only because I've already read the likes of 1984. I can't imagine the impact on a reader reading this back in the late 1920s. It's also worth adding that the writing really does hold up nearly a century later, which is baffling amazing. <br/><br/>So, great stuff for nearly 100 years old, but "just okay" because I struggled to fully follow the character.

#book

Published 2026-08-01 11:11 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere