The Rotunda

8 hrs. 54 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Ilya Surguchev

Narrator Irina Vorobyova

Description

In the pre-revolutionary years, the name of Ilya Surguchyov (1881–1956) stood alongside such leading realist writers as Bunin, Leonid Andreev, and Kuprin. Harshly rejecting the Bolshevik coup, I. D. Surguchyov joined the White movement and walked with it through the entire thorny path of struggle. In 1920, he left Russia. In 1928, his last major work was published—a novel titled “The Rotunda.” That was the name of a Paris restaurant where the literary bohemia gathered. The narrator-protagonist, a Russian émigré, tells of his troubles in France, Spain, and Holland. He directs a group of liliputian orchestra players. He has to deal with all kinds of people: artists, servants, drunks, prostitutes, and vagrants. He doesn’t like his profession; his art is fake, and life is meager. Nostalgia rules his soul: “The trouble is that nothing extra suits me, and I don’t fit into anything—I can’t fit into it; I’m alien to this city, to this land, to this sky, and even to these stars.”