The Musicians of Nemukhin

10 hrs. 48 min.

Children's Books, Audio Fairy Tales & Poems

Language Russian

Author Veniamin Kaverin

Narrator Olga Chernova

Description

The novella “The Night Watchman, or Seven Entertaining Stories Told in the City of Nemuhi in the Thousand Nine Hundred Unknown Year” is written based on earlier published fairy tales.

More details

Back in the 1920s, advising to move the setting of his fantastic stories to Russia, A. M. Gorky suggested to Kaverin that he write something on the themes of common catchphrases—“for example: about the devil who broke his leg—remember: ‘Even the devil can’t find his way with a broken leg here.’” Thanks to this “hint” from Gorky, the fairy tale novella “Many Good People and One Envious” was born: “One of its heroes wore an iron belt so as not to ‘burst from envy,’ and another so easily managed to hit the neighbor ‘right in the eyes,’ that an ambulance had to be called at once.” From fairy tales written at different times, the cycle “The Night Watchman, or Seven Entertaining Stories Told in the City of Nemuhi in the Thousand Nine Hundred Unknown Year” gradually came together. Kaverin considered the best in this fairy-tale cycle to be the story “The Nemuhi Musicians”: “I came up with it in Yugoslavia, on the Adriatic Sea coast, in Dubrovnik. The impression of this beautiful old city-fortress found its reflection in the fairy tale ‘The Flying Boy.’
‘”I have always wanted to write fairy tales,” Beniamin Alexandrovich confessed. ‘And time for that was always found… But I can’t tell you how fairy tales are written. Despite the apparent simplicity, this art is mastered by very few—and I have no confidence that I belong among them.’

Contents:
— The Town of Nemuhi
— The Glassblower’s Son
— The Nemuhi Musicians
— Light Steps
— Silvan(t)
— Many Good People and One Envious
— The Hourglass
— The Flying Boy