Konstantin Paustovski (1892–1968)

What a life. This is a one of the most beautiful and amazing books ever read, the author's voice is a shining light through an incredibly tumultuous time at the end of the Tsarist Russian Empire and the dawn of the Russian Revolution. It is a biography recounted like a novel, a flowing set of immediate first-hand experiences rather than retrospective rationalisations. The author was a wandering soul, an adventurer in many regards, who saw life and nature as a bounty to experience.

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 show more 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. show less

A book of short stories, some better than others however, as a whole it is a very readable book. I've only owned this book for a short space of time and have read it twice. There is a great writing style employed in this book and would thoroughly recommend it, I enjoy sitting with a cup of coffee and having a quiet read.