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The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.7344
EAN: 9780810112438
ISBN: 0810112434
Label: Northwestern University Press
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 316
Publication Date: March 29, 1995
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Studio: Northwestern University Press
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Ivan Chonkin - Universal Slacker
Ivan Chonkin is an inept private in the Soviet army on the cusp of World War Two who first finds himself ordered to guard an airplane in a distant village, then finds himself forgotten by the authorities, and finally remembered and with a vengeance.
`The Life and Extraordinary Times of Private Ivan Chonkin' might be called a Soviet Catch-22 [Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)] for its seemingly absurdist send up of life in the Red Army. I say 'seemingly absurdist' because, ... Read More
Rating: - Voinovich Masterpiece!
This book served as my introduction to Vladimir Voinovich. It has to be one of greatest Soviet satires ever written.
If you are going to read this book you MUST also read "Pretender to the Throne The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin". "Pretender to the Throne" is essentially part II of this book and, in my opinion, even better than part I. Voinovich masterfully unfolds the chaos of the Soviet Union through the simple life of Ivan Chonkin, a common Russian soldier. This book will ... Read More
Rating: - The Funniest Book I Have Ever Read by a Country Kilometer
I am a native Russian speaker and have read this is the book in its original form. I was just having a friendly argument with someone and in the process found this. I had no idea some poor SOB translated it into English (I really don't envy him).
Now I have no idea how good the translation is and to me it's practically impossible to translate Russian into English well, especially when it's something funny. However, if it's even half as funny in English as it is in Russian it'll be the funniest ... Read More
Rating:  - Like the "Good Soldier Woody Allen"
A previous reviewer compared Chonkin to the WWI story of a Czech soldier named "Good Soldier Svejk" which is a classic of military bumbling. This is more of a statement of problems of the Soviet System as it existed just before WW2. Chonkin is a 'so-so' soldier (a misfit) who is sent to a small collective farm (a kolkhov) to guard a damaged airplane. Though he is to be there for only a week, with the German Barbarossa attack he is forgotten about. So he goes about his orders as expected.
Some ... Read More
Rating: - Ivan Chonkin
For those who may think that Russian literature is unrelieved doom and gloom, crime and punishment, endless Slavic heaviness about the meaning of life from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, Vladimir Voinovich's The life and extraordinary adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin is a masterpiece of comic writing that you will not want to miss. Chonkin is the not quite as bright younger brother of Jaroslav Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk, with this exception: Hasek's hero wears the mask of naiveté, but after a while we can ... Read More
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