| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Village (Oneworld Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Ivan Bunin's first published novel, "The Village" is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centering on episodes in the lives of two peasant brothers - 'characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human' - it reveals the pettiness, violence and ignorance of life on the land.At once nostalgic for a bygone more innocent age and foreshadowing the turbulences of the twentieth century, Bunin's narrative is a triumph of bitter realism, shot through with the author's classical style and precision of language.
About the Author
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His last book of fiction Dark Alleys is arguably the most widely read 20th-century collection of short stories in Russia.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The book is set in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The 1905 revolution and its aftermath are encompassed within the storyline. One of Bunin's central characters is an entrepreneurial peasant, a little later in history to be given the fateful description of a kulak. Although the author clearly despises the rabble who represent the revolution in the villages, his antihero is brutal, exploitative and, with the exception of his existential self-pity, insensitive. His brother, who becomes a major character later, is rather more sensitive and clearly sees the inequities and cruelty of the old way of living, is nevertheless seen as ineffectual.
Bunin's storyline is thin and is really a vehicle for a guided tour of the iniquities and stupidity of rural life in this part of the world. For those familiar with the area or with Bunin's life, the area portrayed is close to the towns of Elets, Lipetsk and Voronezh, a few hundred miles to the south of Moscow. In Bunin's village, heroism is scarce, intelligence only a little less so. This is an uncompromisingly bleak, cruel book.
Bunin's storyline is thin and is really a vehicle for a guided tour of the iniquities and stupidity of rural life in this part of the world. For those familiar with the area or with Bunin's life, the area portrayed is close to the towns of Elets, Lipetsk and Voronezh, a few hundred miles to the south of Moscow. In Bunin's village, heroism is scarce, intelligence only a little less so. This is an uncompromisingly bleak, cruel book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
6 of 10 people found the following review helpful
The sad life of Russian villages
2 Feb 2001
Perhaps you have to be a Russian literature junkie like me to enjoy this book, but I think it is good literature, although not a masterpiece. It tells the story of the brothers Kuzma and Tikhon Ilich, who live in the village of Durnovka. It is a small and isolated village, where life is dull, sad and hard. Everyday is a struggle for survival in a hostile environment. As always in Russian literature, the characters are tormented people (is it the cold and the vastness, or what?), with tortured souls and a great difficulty to get along with their neighbors. Kuzma goes to Tikhon's farm, to manage it, but at some point he leaves. The best about it is Bunin's sensitiveness and beautiful wording.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
