This is a moron level concern.

E. This is like being afraid to read Brandon Sanderson novels because of 'let's go brandon'

The author could also write an autobiographical novel called "The Idiot".

And yet it's a part of how humans process art and war, just as people became critical of the art of enemy nations in the world wars. Why shouldn't it be written about?

If you'd read the story, you'd know that they did.

I think this is easy to dismiss based on the headline, but I thought it was actually an interesting presentation of thoughts and opinions on the matter that actually originate in Ukraine and other countries nearby. I think this stands in contrast to a lot of the quick, vapid reactions we saw around boycotting everything "Russian" last year as shows of bullshit solidarity. I think this actually does a decent job of at least presenting some explanation of people who do truly believe that (e.g. Ukrainians, Georgians), even if you might not find their reasoning convincing. And the author does attempt to address their own perception of those arguments in good faith, performing a literary and historical analysis of the prominence of Russian novels in our culture and with respect to what relationship if any they have to the current politics in the region.

The author of the article.

The article literally opens with the following lines:

>The first and only time I visited Ukraine was in 2019. My book “The Possessed”—a memoir I had published in 2010, about studying Russian literature—had recently been translated into Russian, along with “The Idiot,” an autobiographical novel, and I was headed to Russia as a cultural emissary, through an initiative of pen America and the U.S. Department of State.

The author of the article did write an autobiographical novel called "The Idiot" and yes it is a reference to Dostoevsky's novel of the same name, as alluded to in the following paragraph.

This joke didn’t go over well at all did it?

U win some, you lose some.

Guess the author isn't Ukrainian themselves since Ukraine has banned Russian lit.

(Also, I've exhausted my monthly free article quota so can't read the link.)

Maybe you should read the article instead of leaving such a pointless shallow comment

Russian literature is overrated

I can't believe how brainwashed or ignorant some of these westerners are!

The Americans, Brits, Australians and many other European countries have invaded multiple countries just in the last couple of decades. They routinely drop bombs on civilian areas using drones and the conflicts have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Asia and Africa.

Despite all this, it still would be plain stupidity to claim that American or British authors are somehow evil and need to be boycotted.

This might be a rant unrelated to the topic. But as an Asian it's hard not to notice the difference in the discourse when a fellow European country is now invaded. People act as if some never before heard of horror and barbarism has been unleashed, when their own nations were committing those same horrors on others.

When was the last time the west invaded and attempted to annex a democracy?

Have you read any postcolonial critique of American and British lit, just as it exists for Russian lit?

So not living in a democracy means that you, as an ordinary person, aren’t worth protecting?

So Americans weren’t disturbed by the nationalism in War and Peace before this war, they were just bothered by that one throwaway racist comment?

Wow, people are shallow.

(War and Peace is one of my favorite books even though I disagree with Tolstoy about practically everything. There hasn’t been a book written in any language without beliefs I find disturbing, so I’m just used to it, and writing my own.)

You wrote a lot for someone who couldn’t have possibly read the article.