The Story of a Life

by Konstantin Paustovsky

Other authorsDouglas Smith (Translator), Douglas Smith (Introduction)

Paperback, 2023

Status

Available

Call number

891.7342

Publication

NYRB Classics (2023), 816 pages

Description

"In 1943, Konstantin Paustovsky, the Soviet Union's most revered author, started out on his masterwork - The Story of a Life; a grand, novelistic memoir of a life lived on the fast-unfurling frontiers of Russian history. Eventually published over six volumes, it would cement Paustovsky's reputation as the voice of Russia around the world, and see him nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Newly translated by Guggenheim fellow Douglas Smith, Vintage Classics are proud to reintroduce the first three books of Paustovsky's epic for a whole new generation. Taking its reader from Paustovsky's Ukrainian youth, struggling with a family on the verge of collapse and the first flourishes of creative ambition, to his experiences working as a paramedic on Russia's frontlines and then as a journalist covering the country's violent spiral into revolution, The Story of a Life offers a portrait of an artistic journey like no other. As richly dramatic as the great Russian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries, but all the more powerful for its first-hand testament to one of history's most chaotic eras, The Story of Life is a uniquely dazzling achievement of modern literature"--… (more)

Media reviews

The Neglected Books Page

Russian literature produced two of the world’s greatest autobiographies in the middle of the 20th century: Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope and Konstantin Paustovsky's The Story of a Life.

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New York Times

“The Story of a Life is one of the most surprisingly wonderful books it has ever been my pleasure to read.”

Kirkus Reviews

..the most notable export from behind the Iron Curtain since Doctor Zhivago and Zoshchenko

New York Review of Books

Paustovsky is not a thinker. He neither analyzes nor theorizes, nor has he any unusual or profound insights. His occasional, somewhat commonplace, reflections are the weakest part of his book. But he has courage and honesty, an unaffected and very engaging simplicity, a clear eye for detail, a

retentive memory, an avid thirst for experience, a generous, tolerant, sympathetic attitude to human beings, and an enormous capacity for appreciation. He makes no claim to be either historian or philosopher; he writes simply about himself, a dedicated man, possessed by two great loves, a love of his country and of literature.

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