Chapter II: Literary Apprenticeship

David Gillespie

From Valentin Rasputin and Soviet Russian Village Prose (1986), pp. 13-26, doi:10.59860/td.c6b00e5

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Part of the book: Valentin Rasputin and Soviet Russian Village Prose

David C. Gillespie

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 22

Modern Humanities Research Association

ContemporaryRussianFictionopen


Abstract.  Rasputin's early short stories. His first journalistic books, Kostrovyye novykh gorodov ('Lights for Building New Cities') is a collection of essays in praise of construction work for the Abakan-Tayshet railway line, and Kray vozle samogo neba ('The Land at the Top of the World'), which describes the lifestyle of the isolated Tofalariyan people, whose lives are conditioned by the mountains and the taiga where they hunt. Finally, Rasputin's first full-length povest', and his first work to show real artistic power: Den'gi dlya Marii, a story about a village shop in Siberia, where Mariya, the reluctant shopkeeper, must deal with a discrepancy in accounts discovered by a government inspector.

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