Malva: A Story

Gorky, Maksim, 1868-1936Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 109K words
Chapters: 11

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Malva: Kertomus by Maksim GorkyAuthor: Gorky, Maksim, 1868-1936,Language: Finnish, Class: PG: Language and Literatures: Slavic (including Russian), Languages and Literature, Release Date: Aug 27, 2017

Editor's review

This is the Finnish translation of Gorky's short story "Malva," a public-domain ebook from Project Gutenberg. The work continues the concern with the lower classes and with freedom characteristic of Gorky's early writing, depicting through seaside labor and human relationships an individual's struggle between poverty and longing. The Finnish translation offers readers a path into Gorky's text from another language and is also suited to comparing how different languages convey the same author's style. Read it as a short story rather than a novel, and attend to character psychology in dialogue and scene changes. For those studying the传播 of Russian literature, the history of Nordic translation, or the Finnish language, this ebook has documentary value; general readers who simply want a Chinese translation of Gorky's representative works need not start with this edition.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Finnish learners who want to practice reading with literary texts
Readers studying the translation and传播 of Gorky's works
Those interested in the reception history of Russian literature in the Nordic region
Digital reading enthusiasts who collect public-domain ebooks

Not a good fit for

General readers unfamiliar with Finnish who only want a Chinese translation
Readers expecting a full-length narrative or a biography of the author
Beginners who need annotations, introductions, and other teaching aids

Reading tips

Read through once without looking up words, grasping the relationships and the direction of the scenes.
On a second reading, mark recurring images and dialogue to appreciate Gorky's writing of the lower classes.
Compare with a Chinese or Russian translation to see the syntax and tone of the Finnish version.
Check the ebook's layout and punctuation before reading, so that scanning conversions do not interfere with understanding.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a Chinese edition?

No. The text is in Finnish; it is the Finnish translation of Gorky's short story "Malva," published by Project Gutenberg. Chinese readers without Finnish will need to use translations in other languages or read in parallel.

Can I read it without any Finnish?

You can read paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary and machine translation, but it will be laborious. A more practical approach is to read a Chinese or English translation first for the plot, then use the Finnish text as language-learning material, focusing on vocabulary and sentence patterns rather than complete understanding.

Why do the recommendations stress that it is an ebook?

Because this version comes from Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain electronic text, with layout and proofreading dependent on volunteer work. When reading, watch for line breaks, punctuation, and special characters, and check other editions when quoting.

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About the author

Gorky, Maksim, 1868-1936 Author

Maxim Gorky (Gorky, Maksim, 1868-1936) is a highly influential writer in the history of Russian and Soviet literature. This site holds 32 of his works, including the plays The Lower Depths (Pohjalla: Kuvaelmia, neljä näytöstä and The Lower Depths: A Drama in Four Acts), the autobiographical In the World (a sequel to My Childhood), the novel Mother, and shorter fiction and story collections such as Twenty-six and One, Konovalov, Orlóff and His Wife, and Tales from Gorky. His writing often focuses on the wandering, struggle, and awakening of lower-class people, distinguished by realistic detail and vivid characterization; the play The Lower Depths is especially notable for its ensemble structure portraying the urban poor, and has had a lasting influence. Because the database lacks nationality, birth and death dates, and classification information, public information is limited, so no additional biographical inferences are made here.