Death for All the Good Things

The heroes of Maxud Ibragimbekov’s novella are outwardly nothing remarkable. Ordinary boys living an ordinary boyhood life. Their worries and problems are just like everyone else’s: understanding (often — misunderstanding) with relatives and friends, falling in love, searching for their place in the class, in the group, in life.

At first glance, it looks like typical “teenage” prose where everything is familiar and predictable. But the moment the reader finds room for this book within their own ideas about what they read, the plot seems to break loose: a didactic novella turns into drama, and the boys’ rivalries stop being childish and instead become a real struggle for life. “... It’s such an ideal teenage boyhood prose—everything is serious and real, and there’s no time for silly games...”

Coming back on foot from a pioneer camp, four fifth-graders accidentally end up in a cave equipped by Hitler’s men during the Great Patriotic War as a weapons storage…

In 1975, a film titled “The Secret of the Mountain Underground Dungeon” was made based on Maxud Ibragimbekov’s novella “For All the Good—Death.”