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Loading... The Story of a Life (1964)by Konstantin Paustovski
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Konstantin Paustovsky, a Soviet author, was a contender for the Nobel the year it went to Boris Pasternak. It is his epic multi-volume memoir -- the first 3 volumes under review here published as an omnibus in 1964 [Trans. Joseph Barnes] -- for which he is most famous. Konstantin grew up in old Russia under Tsar Nicholas and came of age in the turbulent WWI and Civil War period during which Russia blew apart. The focus of this part of the memoir is from about 1900 to 1920. His story is brimming with incident and adventure, each page a new amazing story, and lovely description, Konstantin was in the middle of history. The scary old man on the cover doesn't do the book justice. Konstantin writes with poetic grace, like those beautiful old color pictures of Russia, he is both familiar and foreign with one foot in the old world and one in the new. He bridges the divide and is conscious of it, which makes his memoir so fascinating. One can understand it intellectually, but through Konstantin you experience the fragile autumn of Russia and descent into winter. A remarkable and wonderful story, sadly forgotten. ( )
Russian literature produced two of the world’s greatest autobiographies in the middle of the 20th century: Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope and Konstantin Paustovsky's The Story of a Life. “The Story of a Life is one of the most surprisingly wonderful books it has ever been my pleasure to read.” ..the most notable export from behind the Iron Curtain since Doctor Zhivago and Zoshchenko Paustovsky is not a thinker. He neither analyzes nor theorizes, nor has he any unusual or profound insights. His occasional, somewhat commonplace, reflections are the weakest part of his book. But he has courage and honesty, an unaffected and very engaging simplicity, a clear eye for detail, a retentive memory, an avid thirst for experience, a generous, tolerant, sympathetic attitude to human beings, and an enormous capacity for appreciation. He makes no claim to be either historian or philosopher; he writes simply about himself, a dedicated man, possessed by two great loves, a love of his country and of literature. AwardsNotable Lists
"In 1943, Konstantin Paustovsky, the Soviet Union's most revered author, started out on his masterwork - The Story of a Life; a grand, novelistic memoir of a life lived on the fast-unfurling frontiers of Russian history. Eventually published over six volumes, it would cement Paustovsky's reputation as the voice of Russia around the world, and see him nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Newly translated by Guggenheim fellow Douglas Smith, Vintage Classics are proud to reintroduce the first three books of Paustovsky's epic for a whole new generation. Taking its reader from Paustovsky's Ukrainian youth, struggling with a family on the verge of collapse and the first flourishes of creative ambition, to his experiences working as a paramedic on Russia's frontlines and then as a journalist covering the country's violent spiral into revolution, The Story of a Life offers a portrait of an artistic journey like no other. As richly dramatic as the great Russian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries, but all the more powerful for its first-hand testament to one of history's most chaotic eras, The Story of Life is a uniquely dazzling achievement of modern literature"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)891.7342Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian fiction USSR 1917–1991 Early 20th century 1917–1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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