The Road Goes On and On… (play)

Blessed are the roads by which we go far away!

Dear listeners! We present to you an audio play based on the book by Alexandra Yakovlevna Brushtein “The Road Goes Far Away…”, created with the participation of Konstantin Raikin and artists of the “Satirikon” Theater.

The audio play genre allows you to fully immerse yourself in the atmosphere created by Alexandra Yakovlevna, to hear the voices of her heroes in the wonderful performance of great artists.

This is a wise book about love, strong and friendly families, decent people, about respect for the human personality, about faith in a bright and happy future for everyone.

Enduring themes don’t grow old—this is why this book, written in 1956, was read by more than one generation of readers.

According to Dmitry Bykov, A.Ya. Brushtein managed to create a text outside of genre: it contains memories, a teenage melodrama, an action film, and a sentimental fairy tale, and a political detective story—she created living characters with living emotions, with a curious teen’s sharp-eyed perspective; they are lovable because they know how to be friends, to choose instinctively “their own,” with whom it’s warm.

It’s no accident that everyone who read “The Road…” exchanges quotes like a password, like call signs, rejoicing at the meeting and feeling a sense of community with good, kind, NORMAL people. And right now, that’s especially relevant!

Dmitry Bykov on the most Main Book of his childhood…

As you know, the road goes far away, and in the distance—at great distances—everything turns out in a human way.

It’s incredibly vivid, like a picture translated from another country, but isn’t that all? I thought for a very long time about why “The Road Goes Far Away…” became a favorite book of my generation and all the generations that followed. It wasn’t reissued for as long as—like all Soviet literature—it stayed with us in our homes, and we read it.

I thought for a long time and, at last, I think I started to understand the secret of this amazing work. There, of course, is that Sashенька Yánovskaya who grew up in a very hot, very direct, very alive family—throughout the whole book she keeps running into unthinking, stupid, and invincible evil.

And we have to not try to find a compromise with it, not negotiate with it, not be afraid. We must defeat it right here and now. And we don’t have any other option. We’ll die or we’ll win. That’s a very strong emotion, very rare—and Brushtein described it with incredible precision.

“Alexandra Brushtein’s book ‘The Road Goes Far Away…’ I think every current adult read it in childhood. And everyone owes her.”

Konstantin Paustovsky

“Real things in literature are a kind of sorcery. In the book ‘The Road Goes Far Away…’ prose turns into living poetry—i.e., it reaches perfection. There are rare books that exist not as a literary phenomenon but as a phenomenon of life itself, as a fact in the reader’s biography. And that’s how it is with your book. It entered life (in my case, mine) as one of the unquestionable events of my life.

Dina Rubina

One of my favorite books from childhood was Alexandra Yakovlevna Brushtein’s ‘The Road Goes Far Away…’ A worn old book, patched and re-glued many times. Unlike other Soviet books, it had some charming atmosphere of family, permeated with love, respect, and humor. A kind of special—non-Soviet—humanity. And humanity—love—humor, longing, cuteness. We could quote whole phrases with friends. Years went by, and the book wasn’t forgotten; it kept calling to us with a distant, quiet light of noble romance. And then, many years later, I read it again. And I realized it hadn’t grown dim at all. A wonderful book about friendship, about love, about tender family attachment to loved ones. A wonderful book written in an engrossing, calm, gentle language.

Iacek Jevich

The fact that such clear-minded people as Alexandra Brushtein sometimes manage to pass through the most complicated, harshest era like a knife through butter—and remain the same bright person with an unspoiled soul—and also convey to a huge number of children those simple and honest rules of life, and give a vaccination against ‘stupid evil’—all of this, of course, is extremely optimistic. Thank you, Alexandra Yakovlevna!”