Any recomendations for short (100-200 pg) Russian books?

[sillygoose1]

Preferably a series of something in the whodunnit detective category but anything will do really. Even short stories would be good. Goosebumps is too easy for me and Boris Akunin is a little too difficult so something in the middle would be great.

[stelingo]

Try novels by Chingiz Abdullayev. He writes detective/spy type novels. I've read a couple featuring a character called agent Drongo, such as 'Randevu s Valtasarom' They aren't too difficult and have lots of dialogue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chingiz_Abdullayev#Drongo

Andrey Kurkov is another author I've read. Detective/mystery, fairly easy language with plenty of dialogue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Kurkov

I definitely recommend his novel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_the_Penguin

(In fact I'm rather upset as my copy of it seems to have gone missing. )

Finally, I noticed the other day that there is a new Penguin Russian reader, which I may well buy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-Stories-Russian-Penguin-Parallel/dp/014311834X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504206734&sr=8-1&keywords=penguin+russian+reader

[sillygoose1]

Those look great thanks. Death of a Penguin has definitely been added!

[Teango]

Here are some funny short detective stories in Russian that could help you get started (audio files are also available for this series):

• Рассказ-сенсация (A1-A2)
• Рассказ-провокация (A2-B1)
• Рассказ-канонизатия (B1-B2)

[aaleks]

Try novels by Chingiz Abdullayev. He writes detective/spy type novels. I've read a couple featuring a character called agent Drongo, such as 'Randevu s Valtasarom' They aren't too difficult and have lots of dialogue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chingiz_Abdullayev#Drongo

Just in case, there's a series based on the books. I can't say if it's good or not, I don't remember, I watched the series years ago (it's made in 2002). But it looks like the series is on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... 0%B8%D0%B8 )

[stelingo]

Круто, спасибо

[aabram]

If you're into sci-fi and supernatural and stuff then you're immensly in luck, there are literally hundreds of authors and many, many collections to choose from. Here is one that sort of list. I have several of from the series, this one

and

and others but there are boatloads of other similar collections. Short stories from various authors loosely tied together by either theme or year. It could be a bit of hassle to get them, but Ozon.ru has some of them in stock apparently ships abroad as well.

[mcthulhu]

You'd asked about whodunnits. Darya Dontsova has a whole lot of murder mysteries in several series with various protagonists, often housewives who get into trouble while bumbling around as amateur detectives. There's quite a bit of humor involved (I've laughed out loud several times), and the plots can be preposterous, but that's fine with me. She has a chatty, conversational style, and there's a lot of dialogue. It looks like Amazon has many of her books. Sample title in English - The Blue Pug of Happiness. (A pug did actually get dyed blue in that one, I think.) These are definitely lighter than Akunin, though longer than the page count you'd asked for. They are relatively short novels, anyway.

The cover art is entertaining on its own - the covers all have colorful collages of people and objects from the books, and are kind of surreal until you've read the book and figured out what they were about.

[Keys]

I read Chekhov and a lot of other authors for free on Gutenberg. There's a lot of sites where you can read Russian folktales or Russian literature in parallel with English as well.

For contemporary Russian, I like Russendisko, from Vladimir Kaminer, about Russian and other immigrants in Berlin. Although he's Russian and he originally wrote it in German, it's been rewritten in Russian.

I see it on Amazon.com, but ridiculously expensive: https://www.amazon.com/Russendisko/dp/5867932036/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504316846&sr=1-4&keywords=russendisko

I think I bought it in St Petersburg for next to nothing.

Here's some old fashioned but easier to read 'cuz interlinear -if that's your thing- Russian from Chekhov and Gogol from our HypLern project:
HypLern - Learn Russian with Fairytales, plus mp3s (or here for Look Inside and paperback version)
HypLern - Learn Russian with Short Stories, plus mp3s (or here for Look Inside and paperback version)
HypLern - Learn Russian with Gogol's Nos (or here for Look Inside and paperback version)

Free to download for anyone who's interested

[Arnaud]

Sci-fi novels by Alexander Belyaev are good and not too difficult: Голова профессора Доуэля, Человек-амфибия are his most famous works and you can also consider other well known novels as Ариэль, Продавец воздуха, Остров погибших кораблей, etc.