The Ophir Starling

4 hrs. 27 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Boris Evseev

Narrator Sergey Kirsanov

Description

Russian subject, adventurer, and schemer Ivan Trevoga—who planned to found the Ophi r Kingdom on the island of Borneo—was, by Catherine II’s order, placed in a “House of Restraint.” There he teaches a starling human speech. Soon Trevoga manages to smuggle the bird to Moscow, to a mysterious rift in time located in the famous Voice Ravine. For many years, things disappeared there—and then, after dozens and even hundreds of years, they reappeared again as separate people and even whole military units. The chief secretary of the Secret Expedition, Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky, sends people to catch the audacious starling that shouts. The search party enters the Voice Ravine and disappears there for more than two hundred years. They reappear in Moscow only in spring 2014… Boris Evseev’s book includes ten new stories and a short, sharp-plot novel-parable “The Ophi r Starling,” which was published in the journal “Youth” (2015, nos. 1–3), became a finalist for the “Yasnaya Polyana” award, and won V. Kataev’s prize.