STORIES FROM A SIBERIAN VILLAGE

by Shukshin, Vasilii Makarovich; Michael, Laura; Givens, John

• ISBN13: 9780875805726
• ISBN10: 0875805728
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-08-01
• Publisher: Northern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

A cultural phenomenon in his day-an award-winning film director and actor who also wrote novels, plays, and movie scripts-Vasily Shukshin (1929–1974) is renowned for his mastery of the short story. Credited with revitalizing the short story as a genre in Russian literature, he was posthumously honored with the Soviet Union's highest literary prize following his untimely death at the age of forty-five. Stories from a Siberian Villageintroduces Shukshin to English readers with twenty-five stories that reflect the Siberian origins of his artistic identity. These stories, most of which have never before appeared in English, are set in a remote Siberian village caught in transition between rural traditions and modern Soviet life. There Shukshin's peasants-survivors of revolution, collectivization, and war-seek their identity in a "brave new world." Eccentrics and oddballs, Shukshin's protagonists are restless freedom seekers whose dreams and foibles are as broad and inexplicable as their native Siberian landscape. As touchy as artists and as unpretentious as truck drivers, they struggle with questions of life and death, faith and reason, custom and progress. From their mutual misapprehensions and the gap between their dreams and reality arises Shukshin's biting humor.

Table of Contents

Shukshin at Large	ix
Kathleen Parthe
Vasily Shukshin: A Storyteller's Story	xv
John Givens
Translators' Note	xlv
Country Folk	3	(8)
I Believe!	11	(10)
Cutting Them Down to Size	21	(8)
The Microscope	29	(10)
Tough Guy	39	(7)
Styopka	46	(12)
Ignakha's Come Home	58	(10)
My Son-in-Law Stole a Truckload of Wood!	68	(13)
Oddball	81	(9)
Mille Pardons, Madame!	90	(8)
Meditations	98	(6)
Stenka Razin	104	(8)
All by Themselves	112	(7)
A Roof Over Your Head	119	(8)
Wolves	127	(7)
Alyosha at Large	134	(15)
Critics	149	(8)
Passing Through	157	(7)
Stubborn	164	(16)
Let's Conquer the Heart!	180	(5)
Vanka Teplyashin	185	(7)
In the Autumn	192	(9)
Strangers	201	(8)
From the Childhood Years of Ivan Popov	209	(31)
Siberian Pies	209	(4)
First Acquaintance with the City	213	(7)
Gogol and Raika	220	(8)
Harvesting	228	(5)
The Ox	233	(2)
The Airplane	235	(2)
The Letter	237	(3)
Uncle Yermolai	240	(5)
Text Notes	245	(4)
Glossary	249	(6)
Major Works of Vasily Shukshin	255