Review: Трудно быть богом

Intended as an easy reader for beginning students of the Russian language, this abridged and simplified version tries to fit Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1964 science-fiction novel “Hard to be a god” (Трудно быть богом) in only 26 brief text pages using a vocabulary of a mere 650 words. And it does not succeed. This is not a story, it’s a string of glimpses from the story. You need to know the story already (for example by reading an English translation), or you will be completely lost. The 26 illustrations by K.V. Garin are beautiful, but that’s not why the learner needs this book. At the end of the book is a dictionary of 7 pages (only a list of Russian words, no translations) and 2 pages of exercise questions.