The MediaBook studio presents the audiobook of the great and popular Russian writer Nikolay Alexandrovich Leikin—“Where Oranges Ripen. A Humorous Description of the Journey of Nikolay Ivanovich and Glafira Semyonovna Ivanovs Through the Riviera and Italy.”
“Where Oranges Ripen” is a satirical account of the trip of a young couple to Italy—one of the writer’s most successful books, having gone through dozens of reissues. The book is narrated by a popular stage and screen actor—Mikhail Rozhlyakov.
“It was about eleven in the evening. In Marseille, waiting for the Nice train departing at midnight, there were three Russians sitting at the station buffet: the Petersburg merchant Nikolay Ivanovich Ivanov, a middle-aged solid man with a rounded belly; his wife Glafira Semyonovna, a young plump woman; and their companion, also a Petersburg merchant, Ivan Kondratyevich Konurin. The travelers were dressed in the latest Paris fashion; even the men’s beards were trimmed in the French style—but the little Petersburg merchant way of doing things still shone through in everything they did.
— The moment we arrive in Italy—I’ll immediately buy myself somewhere in a fruit garden a big branch with oranges, pack it in a basket, and take it to Petersburg for everyone to see, so they’ll know we’ve been in an orange country.
— But do oranges even grow in Italy? asked Ivan Kondratyevich, sipping red wine and letting out a long sigh.
— Of course they do… Nikolay Ivanovich smiled. — You sell fruit, you have a fruit and colonial store in Petersburg, and yet you don’t know where oranges grow. Oh, you simple country bumpkin!
— But how could we know? After all, we buy oranges for our store in crates from a German named Karl Bogdanich. I thought oranges grow right there in a place called ‘Orange-land’.”
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