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And Quiet Flows the Don, Book 1 of 2
An epic story about the Cossacks of the Don Steppes during WWI and the revolution that follows.
616 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1967
17 people want to read
About the author
Mikhail Sholokhov
245 books496 followersMikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people."
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 18, 2020
This exceptionally powerful book charts the lives of a small cluster of Don Cossacks from the intensely personal dramas of village life, through into a sweeping epic of war and revolution, in which childhood friends are turned against each other - a novel of humanity and inhumanity, and the stripping down of personal connection in favour of ideology, alongside moments when people are at their most intensely loving and human. Harrowing but beautiful, sensual, moving. Sholokov deserved the Nobel prize for this novel alone.
June 15, 2015
"He had no cap, nor had he the upper part of his cranium, for it had been cut clean away by a shard of shrapnel. In the empty brain-pan, framed by damp strains of hair, glimmered rose-coloured rain-water."
This is a book written in an 'epic' style based around the famous warrior Cossacks of the Don valley. It is split into four parts Peace, War (WWI),Revolution and Civil War (when the Bolsheviks fought the so called White Russians, various disparate groups who feared Soviet rule for various reasons). The Cossacks worked small parcels of land supporting their families but were also seen as the enforcers of the Tsarist regime.
The book starts in the village of Tatarsk and the Melekhov family. The father brought back a Turkish wife when he returned from war against the Ottoman Empire and subsequent children are darker skinned than their neighbours which causes frictions between them. Then the youngest son decides to abandon his own wife and run away with the wife of a neighbour causing yet more family strife only to be called into active service in the Army when war is declared later rising to become an officer.
Throughout the book we are introduced to a myriad of characters with their own sub-plots. For me this is where the books falls down slightly and stops it becoming a truly great book. Despite Gregor Melekhov appearing at fairly frequent intervals there are for me too many characters that it is difficult to really connect with any of them properly. As such there are also too many loose ends come the end IMHO. The fact that this is only the first book does not really help if truth be told.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about this book is the fact that it was originally written in 1928 so quite shortly after the true life events occurred and only a few years after Stalin had risen to the highest office within the country. For it has to be said that no sides can be said to have come out of this with their image untarnished due to the brutal struggle for superiority. In fact Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965 largely on the strengths of this book.
This edition of this book is over 500 pages long so does not rush through the events at a break-neck pace rather it is more of a slow plod but that said I found it a good read which gives an interesting insight into the Russian psyche of the time
This is a book written in an 'epic' style based around the famous warrior Cossacks of the Don valley. It is split into four parts Peace, War (WWI),Revolution and Civil War (when the Bolsheviks fought the so called White Russians, various disparate groups who feared Soviet rule for various reasons). The Cossacks worked small parcels of land supporting their families but were also seen as the enforcers of the Tsarist regime.
The book starts in the village of Tatarsk and the Melekhov family. The father brought back a Turkish wife when he returned from war against the Ottoman Empire and subsequent children are darker skinned than their neighbours which causes frictions between them. Then the youngest son decides to abandon his own wife and run away with the wife of a neighbour causing yet more family strife only to be called into active service in the Army when war is declared later rising to become an officer.
Throughout the book we are introduced to a myriad of characters with their own sub-plots. For me this is where the books falls down slightly and stops it becoming a truly great book. Despite Gregor Melekhov appearing at fairly frequent intervals there are for me too many characters that it is difficult to really connect with any of them properly. As such there are also too many loose ends come the end IMHO. The fact that this is only the first book does not really help if truth be told.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about this book is the fact that it was originally written in 1928 so quite shortly after the true life events occurred and only a few years after Stalin had risen to the highest office within the country. For it has to be said that no sides can be said to have come out of this with their image untarnished due to the brutal struggle for superiority. In fact Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965 largely on the strengths of this book.
This edition of this book is over 500 pages long so does not rush through the events at a break-neck pace rather it is more of a slow plod but that said I found it a good read which gives an interesting insight into the Russian psyche of the time
December 2, 2018
This book relates much raw emotion of many kinds. The relationship between Bunchuk and Anna is for awhile a refreshing reprieve from all this raw emotion. Peace, War, Revolution, Civil War and meanwhile quiet flows the Don.
November 1, 2025
I loved the beginning, lost track of characters and relationships once things changed around and by the end was fairly desperate to finish it. Annoying because I find the historical setting and subject matters fascinating, but I just got lost.
November 27, 2014
4-Stars! And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov – The New Kindle Edition of a Russian Classic
Originally published in 1934, this edition of ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ is a tough book to review. It is a classic of Soviet literature and one of the most poetic and image-laden books you can read in any language. In its day, it sold 10 million copies and Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965 before his death in 1984. You can sympathize or criticize the politics and travails of the man’s attempts to be a writer in Stalin’s Russia, his feud with with Solzhenitsyn, the accusations of plagiarism, and the fact he was a loyal communist, a member of the Supreme Soviet and Central Committee, but it is easy to fall in love with the book, its 1940 successor, ‘The Don Flows Home to the Sea,’ and the later Harvest on the Don.' I read them and early in college and ended up majoring in history and minoring in Russian Studies. They deal with the Don Cossacks in the years before, during, and after WW I, the civil war, and into the early Soviet era of forced collectivization, painting a set of vivid images of the Steppes and the rugged society who inhabited them. The Cossacks were a large agrarian society, and most of the story deals with their daily lives and loves. They were horsemen who loyally served generations of Czars and provided them with the best cavalry in the world. Unfortunately, when horse cavalry met the machinegun in WW I, the result wasn’t pretty. They fell in large numbers.
I read these books in paperback many years ago and have been waiting patiently for Amazon to bring out a Kindle edition, which they finally did a few months ago. With Russian books, that is never easy. With this one, it is nearly impossible. First, ‘And Quiet Flows the Don,’ the later ‘The Don Flows Home to the Sea,’ and even the 1960 ‘Harvest on the Don’ were sometimes published as one book, normally as two, but often chopped up and re-combined, so it is often difficult to figure out what you’ve actually got.
The big downside of this current Kindle edition is the horrible non-editing, which is pointed out by many other reviewers. It comes close to ruining the experience, but don’t let it. I hope Kindle does not take it down, because it deserves publishing. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Kindle formatting could correct the format errors in a matter of days with Sigil or Calibre. If they would send me an unlocked copy, I’d do it myself, for free. It deserves to be read.
William F. Brown is the author of 5 thriller novels on Kindle with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers. They are all also now available on Audible Audio Books. You can read about them at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com
Originally published in 1934, this edition of ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ is a tough book to review. It is a classic of Soviet literature and one of the most poetic and image-laden books you can read in any language. In its day, it sold 10 million copies and Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965 before his death in 1984. You can sympathize or criticize the politics and travails of the man’s attempts to be a writer in Stalin’s Russia, his feud with with Solzhenitsyn, the accusations of plagiarism, and the fact he was a loyal communist, a member of the Supreme Soviet and Central Committee, but it is easy to fall in love with the book, its 1940 successor, ‘The Don Flows Home to the Sea,’ and the later Harvest on the Don.' I read them and early in college and ended up majoring in history and minoring in Russian Studies. They deal with the Don Cossacks in the years before, during, and after WW I, the civil war, and into the early Soviet era of forced collectivization, painting a set of vivid images of the Steppes and the rugged society who inhabited them. The Cossacks were a large agrarian society, and most of the story deals with their daily lives and loves. They were horsemen who loyally served generations of Czars and provided them with the best cavalry in the world. Unfortunately, when horse cavalry met the machinegun in WW I, the result wasn’t pretty. They fell in large numbers.
I read these books in paperback many years ago and have been waiting patiently for Amazon to bring out a Kindle edition, which they finally did a few months ago. With Russian books, that is never easy. With this one, it is nearly impossible. First, ‘And Quiet Flows the Don,’ the later ‘The Don Flows Home to the Sea,’ and even the 1960 ‘Harvest on the Don’ were sometimes published as one book, normally as two, but often chopped up and re-combined, so it is often difficult to figure out what you’ve actually got.
The big downside of this current Kindle edition is the horrible non-editing, which is pointed out by many other reviewers. It comes close to ruining the experience, but don’t let it. I hope Kindle does not take it down, because it deserves publishing. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Kindle formatting could correct the format errors in a matter of days with Sigil or Calibre. If they would send me an unlocked copy, I’d do it myself, for free. It deserves to be read.
William F. Brown is the author of 5 thriller novels on Kindle with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers. They are all also now available on Audible Audio Books. You can read about them at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com
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June 20, 2020Not sure how to rate this. This has probably the worst ending of any book I've ever read--surprising that Sholokhov was not sent to the gulags. I guess you could just skip the last few chapters and then it would be like a 5-star book. Or else you need a few additional chapters with a new ending in which the cossacks and are liquidated and their miserable way of life and false sense of superiority annihilated...you know, and ending where the good guys win.
July 13, 2021
Engaging in bits, this book details the Don revolution in a very realistic way. The romance is real, the human emotions are palpable.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews