num_pages: 661
description: From the very first sentence, “I was in my last year of school in Kiev when the telegram came saying that my father was dying,” readers will be in thrall to the voice of Konstantin Paustovsky. This universally acclaimed memoir gives us an extraordinary picture of Russia during the tumultuous first two decades of the twentieth century. Here are startlingly vivid vignettes of country life, poignant remembrances of the disintegration of the writer’s family, and anecdotes from his student days. Here too are devastating eyewitness reports of the horrors of pogroms, searing visions of towns ravaged by disease, hunger, and violence, and what will stand as the definitive account of the chaos and passion of a nation in the throes of revolution.
language: English
title: The Story of a Life
titlecomplete: The Story of a Life
genres: Russian Literature, Biography, Classics, European Literature, Russia, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Literature, Short Stories, Memoir
ratings_count: 454
series: Повесть о жизни #1-3
awards: awardedAt: -157737600000
name: PEN Translation Prize
category: Joseph Barnes
publisher: Pantheon