Can you name the authors of these works of Russian literature?

Title	Author	Year
Eugene Onegin		1825-32
The Government Inspector		1836
Fathers and Sons		1862
War and Peace		1865-69
Crime and Punishment		1866
The Lower Depths		1902
The Cherry Orchard		1904
The Twelve		1918
And Quiet Flows the Don		1928-40
Requiem		1935-40
The Master and Margarita		1940
Lolita		1955
Doctor Zhivago		1957
Babi Yar		1961
The Gulag Archipelago		1973

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Russian Literature Quiz

by davidr

Created Dec 16, 2008 in Literature
Featured Dec 16, 2008
Game Plays 22,805

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	Ryan D.:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 04:54 GMT	6 points
	Whew, I'm glad I spent those five years studying in St. Petersburg.

	trotsky:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 05:36 GMT	1 point
	how in the hell i spelled solzhenitsyn right on the first try, i'll never know. Lord, how about something with germanic names?

	debbiedoesnothin:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 09:37 GMT	1 point
	I think it could've been a little more forgiving on the spelling of Solzhenitsyn. I tried every spelling I could think of - darn 'Y.'

	davidr:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 10:16 GMT	1 point
	I included all the spellings that I could find in common use but, as far as I can see, Solzhenitsyn's name is only ever spelt one way. I'm never sure whether I should include plausible spelling mistakes as answers in quizzes here.

	Phil_Rose:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 11:06 GMT	0 points
	I only knew Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, but I would never have spelled the latter correctly.

	davidr:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 11:12 GMT	-1 points
	@Phil R.: Exactly as it sounds? There are several accepted spellings and I included all the ones I could find. (The middle letter can be an I, a Y or nothing at all; the last letter can be an I or a Y. I think four or five of those combinations are accepted.)

	Bretzky:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 12:12 GMT	3 points
	I'm not sure that it's accurate to call "Lolita" a work of Russian literature. I know Nabakov himself translated the work into Russian, but he wrote it in English. Perhaps using one of his works originally written in Russian would be better, like "Invitation to a Beheading" or "The Gift".

	Erick Timmons:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 12:52 GMT	3 points
	chinese authors next? ok!!

	davidr:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 13:00 GMT	3 points
	@Brett C.: I fully take your point but "Lolita" is much more widely known than Nabokov's other novels. Perhaps I could have used "The Luzhin Defence" instead but I think even that would be quite a lot harder.

	Joe_Ball:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 14:55 GMT	4 points
	I agree, davidr - there's a difference between alternative spellings (because, after all, these names are transliterated from the Russian) and spelling mistakes. Only the former should be allowed, that's half the fun. As for Lolita, while I agree with Brett, if you want to have Nabokov on a quiz that's the book you have to use, really. Otherwise it would be far too difficult. A final note: does the Cherry Orchard really count? It was a play rather than a novel. Great quiz, anywho :)

	slw@hwdyk.com:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 14:57 GMT	2 points
	ugh. bomberino. i think i'll go take Flags of Africa again to make myself fell better.....:)

	conflictdiamond:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 15:23 GMT	3 points
	I think Chekhov must be included on any list of Great Russian Authors. It's not Great Russian Novelists, after all. And probably more folks will recognize "Cherry Orchard" than "Lady with a Lapdog."

	davidr:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 15:38 GMT	0 points
	@Joe B.: The quiz is about literature as a whole, not just novels. Hence, it includes plays ("The Government Inspector", "The Lower Depths", "The Cherry Orchard") and poetry ("The Twelve", "Requiem", "Babi Yar") as well as novels (including "Eugene Onegin", which is in verse).

	magister:	Dec 16th, 2008 at 16:16 GMT	6 points
	No Lermontov? "Hero Of Our Time?"

	egon14:	Dec 17th, 2008 at 12:31 GMT	4 points
	Darn it! Where did I put my Cyrillic keyboard?

	davidr:	Dec 17th, 2008 at 15:10 GMT	4 points
	@Jim: Maybe I should have copied and pasted Cyrillic answers so that anyone with the right keyboard could avoid all these pesky transliterations! :-)

	HeywoodJ:	Dec 17th, 2008 at 20:53 GMT	2 points
	One of the best novels I've read is Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. I would have loved to have seen that on here.

	moocow:	Jan 15th, 2009 at 21:04 GMT	0 points
	you shouldn't insult the other greats on your list by including the dry and insipid pawn Gorky! 'Hero of Our Time' or 'We' would have been much more satisfying replacements. Still, ochyen dobro!

	fishmonkey:	Mar 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 GMT	2 points
	Nice quiz, except that I can never spell Solzhenitsyn...ooh, i think i just did!

	Untrumpable:	Apr 19th, 2009 at 04:25 GMT	2 points
	I disagree with Babi Yar. Both Yevtushenko and Kuznetsov should be correct. I found the nonfiction book by Kuznetsov fascinating when I read it. Perhaps the quiz should not have clues with multiple correct answers. Very frustrating for English spelling. Had I been able to use Russian letters, I would have had many more correct answers.

	ClintT13:	Jun 10th, 2009 at 03:57 GMT	1 point
	Is "The Government Inspector" the same story as "The Inspector General"? I typed Gogol in because he's one of my favorites and I knew he had to be on here somewhere. (If only he had finished Dead Souls...) Even so, I never have heard of "The Government Inspector". I assume it's just a different translation for the story I mentioned above, but I could be completely wrong.

	davidr:	Jul 10th, 2009 at 17:39 GMT	3 points
	@Untrumpable: I wasn't aware of Kuznetsov's novel but most references to it in English seem to call it Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel and there's a subtitle in the Russian, too. Also, the novel was published in 1966 rather than 1961 so the quiz is correct as it stands. Sorry about the transliteration problems, though — I tried to include all the variants I could find in common use.

	davidr:	Jul 10th, 2009 at 17:40 GMT	1 point
	@ClintT: Yes. The Inspector General is an alternative title for The Government Inspector.

	Notburga:	Dec 19th, 2009 at 14:28 GMT	4 points
	More problems with spelling than with guessing the authors.