Matryona's Place. Tiny Stories

2 hrs. 45 min.

Classics

Language Russian

Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Narrator Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Description

"Matryona’s Yard." After the war, camps, and exile, Solzhenitsyn was assigned to the Meninsky Secondary School in the Kurlovsky District as a mathematician. He moved two kilometers away, to the village of Miltsevo, “in Matryona’s yard,” living with Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova. The story “Matryona’s Yard” was first printed in the January issue of the journal “Novy Mir” in 1963. It has been translated and published in dozens of world languages. The author’s reading included in this audiobook was recorded in 1996.

"Krokhotki." That is what the author called his prose miniatures. The first cycle of “Krokhotki” he wrote from 1958 to 1960. “Krokhotki” were not published in the USSR, but circulated in samizdat. “...In spring 1964,” Solzhenitsyn writes, “I gave my ‘Krokhotki’ to several people on the condition that they could not be hidden, but ‘given to good people.’ These ‘Krokhotki’ ... met with great success. They spread very quickly through hundreds of copies and reached the provinces. Most unexpected for me was that the candid defense of faith (was it long ago in Russia such a shameful thing that no writer’s reputation could withstand it?) was received with emotional approval by the intelligentsia.” The audiobook includes a recording made in 2000.