In the Hills

46 hrs. 13 min.

Classics

Language Russian

Author Andrey Pechersky

Narrator Tatyana Vinogradova

Description

P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky’s epic «In the Woods» and «On the Hills» is his major literary work, to which the writer devoted about twenty years of his life. These books opened up to the reader an entire realm of Russian reality that had previously not been illuminated or studied. Melnikov described the Zavolzhye and the Nагорье as they were in the mid-19th century: the Old Believer merchant class trading along both banks of the Volga; the way of life and crafts; the customs and traditions of the local population; sectarians; dissenting sketes and their inhabitants. The talent of a realist artist and an outstanding storyteller in Melnikov was combined with deep knowledge in the fields of the history of dissent, ethnography, folklore, and the folk language—knowledge he made wide use of throughout his epic. Vivid pictures and dialogues, expressively drawn characters alternate in both works with historical excursions, descriptions of cottage industries, folk holidays, dissenting rites, skete life, and Khlyst ecstatic gatherings.

In both books, legends and beliefs are broadly integrated into the narrative, along with sayings and proverbs, folk and spiritual songs. The combination of all these elements creates a special, unique atmosphere of Melnikov’s epic. The book «On the Hills» is a fully independent work, but at the same time it is a continuation of the book «In the Woods». Many characters from «In the Woods» continue their story in «On the Hills».

Contains scenes of tobacco smoking. Smoking kills.

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