The Department Store

9 hrs. 49 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Ilya Shtemler

Narrator Vyacheslav Gerasimov

Description

A novel about people who work in the service sector. The heroes are shop sellers, merchandisers, and administrators of shopping centers. Mastery of the factual material allowed the author to create an interesting, credible work rich in details. With his new book, I. Shtemler continues a conversation started in the novel “Taxipark.”

Shtemler’s novels “Taxipark,” “Universal Store,” “Archive,” “Morning Highway,” “Merchants”—which became widely known in the 1960s–1990s—like Arthur Hailey’s books, gave Soviet readers genuine pleasure: accurate details, thorough knowledge of the described subject, and exciting plots.
Shtemler didn’t really hide that he took Hailey as his example. Both he and Hailey, before writing their “Train” or “Hotel,” worked in relevant offices and were a conductor on the Leningrad—Baku route, or a junior assistant on duty at the “Hilton” hotel. Shtemler carefully showed “from the inside” the universal store, the taxipark, the railway—managing to become, for Soviet readers, “our Hailey.”