The Loss: A Novella and Two Short Stories

by Vladimir Makanin, Byron Lindsey (Translator), Andrew Wachtel (Editor)

The novella and two short stories that make up this volume were written at three different periods in Makanin's life, yet they are united by their narrative and stylistic invention, their range of human emotion, and the profound humanity of their prose. Though banished and suppressed in the Brezhnev era, Makanin is now recognized as one of Russia's leading writers.

In his celebrated short story "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," two Russian soldiers take a Chechen prisoner during the war, and as events unfold, Makanin reveals the casual brutality of the war but also the secret truths of the character's lives. In the novella The Loss, Pekalov, a drunkard and dreamer obsessed with the idea of building a tunnel under the Ural River, disappears in a ditch while working and is made a saint by the people of his village. "Klyucharyov and Alimushkin" tells the story of what happens when one man becomes remarkably lucky while the other loses all his luck.

Genres: Russian Literature, Short Stories

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Vladimir Semyonovich Makanin is a writer of novels and short stories. He graduated from Moscow State University and worked as a mathematician in the Military Academy until the early 1960s. In 1963 he took a course in scriptwriting, and then worked in the publishing house Sovietskiy Pisatel (The Soviet Writer). Makanin's writing style may be categorized as realist. His forte lies in depicting the psychological impact of everyday life experiences.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir...

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enjoyable, if not particularly mind blowing, collection of short stories written across nearly three decades by the same author. The first (The Loss) & third (The Prisoner from the Caucasus) are noticeably better than the middle entry (Klyucharyov and Alimushkin.) Note that the order they appear in the book is not the chronological order of publication. The introduction contains interesting details about the author’s experience trying to get his work published at various points in time and dealing with different censorship regimes. I would recommend this to someone with a strong interest in Eastern European fiction with the caveat that there are better options out there.