City Folk: Remarkable Stories from the Lives of People of City E.

Anna Matveeva is the author of the novels “The Dyatlov Pass, or The Mystery of the Nine,” “Envyable Feeling of Vera Stenina,” and short story collections “Wait, I’ll Die—and I’ll Come,” “The Nine Nineties,” “Lolotta and Other Paris Stories.” Finalist of the “Big Book” and “National Bestseller” prizes.

The book “THE TOWNSPEOPLE” consists of nine novellas and eighteen characters. One unusual city through the eyes of Anna Matveeva: face to face. Here lives a world-famous playwright Nikolay Kolyada; the great sculptor Ernst Neizvestny was born here; once, the disgraced Marshal Zhukov and the famous Ural storyteller Bazhov met and became friends. Vladimir Shakhrin—still not the leader of the legendary band “Chayf”—trades records at a flea market; Evgeny Roizman—the future mayor—reads classics in a prison cell. On the streets, the public is teased by an old man, Bukashkin—a memorable face of the city. And standing unshakably is the Ipatiev House—the place where the imperial family was executed—while the future owner of the city Boris Yeltsin is, for now, only a student.

Anna Matveeva’s new book about all of them—people, houses, the city’s stories. Paired portraits of vivid personalities connect distant centuries and rhyme with their fates.

Matveeva Anna — The Townspeople. Amazing Stories from the Life of People of City E [Luhanskaya Larisa, 2020, 96 kbps, MP3]