Valentin Rasputin: Farewell to Matyora

"Farewell to Matyora" (1976) is one of Valentin Rasputin's finest works. It is a poignant story about the flooding of an island and a village of the same name for the sake of the grand construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, when the "wayward flow of the Angara" was subdued and an artificial sea was created. Along with other things, Matyora is destined to sink to the bottom of this sea. To vanish along with its birches and pines, the "little swamp with a frog," along with the village and the cemetery. The elderly, who find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the destruction of their ancestral graves, the huts where they were born, and the entire familiar way of life inextricably linked to Matyora, cannot imagine their existence without the island they have inhabited for centuries. "The entire fabric of the novella is a broad stream of folk poetic perception... - wrote A. Solzhenitsyn. - So much feeling - about the native land, its eternity. The fullness of nature - and the most vivid dialogue, sound, speech, precise words."
This edition also includes other novellas by V. Rasputin: "Money for Maria" (1967), "The Last Term" (1970), and "The Fire" (1985).

Author: Valentin Rasputin

Pages: 608 (newsprint). Softcover

Dimensions: 180x115x25 mm

Series: Azbooka-Classics