Siberia on Fire: Stories and Essays / Edition 1

by Valentin Rasputin, GERALD MIKKELSON, Margaret Winchell

Overview

Siberia on Fire brings together some of the best stories and essays by Valentin Rasputin, widely regarded as the finest writer in the Soviet Union today. Although the people and places that make up his fiction are characteristically Siberian, Rasputin's broad appeal and international recognition stem from universal themes—the interdependent elements of nature; the cultural and historical continuum maintained by past, present, and future generations; and the clash between modern and traditional mores.

Rasputin was born in a small Siberian village on the Angara River in 1937 and educated at Irkutsk University. His work displays his continuing concern about the economic development of the vast wilderness of Siberia and its effects on the land and the people. Siberia has undergone monumental changes brought on by the excesses of Stalinism in the twenties and thirties, the losses and deprivations during World War II, and the massive construction and modernization projects of more recent decades. A prominent feature of Rasputin's fiction, often associated with the "village prose" movement, is the portrayal of a traditional way of life that is vanishing along with huge tracts of forests and three-hundred-year-old villages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875805474
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/01/1989
Series:	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.58(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction
Fiction
Vasily and Vasilia (1966)
French Lessons (1973)
Live and Love (1981)
What Should I Tell the Crow? (1981)
The Fire (1985)
Auntie Ulita (1985)
Essays
Your Siberia and Mine (1984)
How Did They End Up in Irkutsk? (1984)
Baikal (1981)
What We Have: A Baikal Prologue Without an Epilogue (1987)
Your Son, Russia, and Our Passionate Brother: On Vasily Shukshin (1984)
The Truths of Aleksandr Vampilov (1977)
Appendix
Bibliography of Major Works by Valentin Rasputin

Editorial Reviews

"Dazzling stories."—Publishers Weekly

"The quality of the translations is uniformly high, an impressive achievement."—New York Times Book Review

"A fine translation of Valentin Rasputin's works, appropriate for use in college and university literature classes."—World Literature Today

From the Publisher

A major contemporary Soviet writer charts the terrain of his native Siberia. Rasputin's dazzling stories are sophisticated splicings of nonchronological episodes. Of special interest is ``The Fire,'' which analyzes the various types of chaos caused by political and social upheaval, and natural disasters, as well as their cost to the individual: ``A sensitive person . . . views himself not as a doctor would, seeing primarily organs fulfilling specific functions, but as the powerful, weak-willed sovereign of an immense, incomprehensible kingdom.'' The nonfiction here, however, is almost redundant, returning the aesthetic transformations of the stories to their factual roots. Rasputin's essays advocating preservation of Siberia's natural resources reveal his convictions but lack documentation and proposals for change; discussions of Soviet writers Vasily Shukshin and Aleksandr Vampilov will not engage the lay reader. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Six stories and six essays present the land, the people, and the spirit of Siberia as portrayed by Valentin Rasputin, one of the most important and influential of contemporary Soviet writers. Cloth edition ($30) not seen by UPBN. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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