Mãi mãi tuổi mười chín

by Grigory Baklanov, Phương Nam (Translator)

The experiences of a nineteen-year-old Soviet lieutenant on the front during World War II as he defends his Russian homeland from the Nazis.

Genres: Russia

Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov was a Russian novelist and editor, well known for his novels about World War II, and as the editor of the literary monthly Znamya during the time of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms.

Reviews

[Alexandra Popoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a proper review of this book:

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/23/bo...

See more about the author in my blog: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished FOREVER NINETEEN (1979), a World War 2 novella by Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov (1923-2009), author of the popular war novel, THE FOOTHOLD (1959). Like the earlier novel, FOREVER NINETEEN is based on Baklanov’s own experience as a decorated artillery officer in the Great Patriotic War. In the Author’s Note of the American edition, he writes that he was the only boy in his high school class and only member of his family to survive the war. The setting of the novel is the fighting along the Eastern Front in southern Ukraine during the winter and spring of 1944. The protagonist, 19-year-old Lieutenant Volodya Tretyakov, has the bad luck (or good luck, depending on one’s perspective), of being repeatedly wounded in combat, sent to hospitals to recover, and then resent to the front.

Baklanov writes to his American readers: “I hope you will find the people in [FOREVER NINETEEN] dear to you. They are part of our people, who lived through the most horrible of wars and who, just like the American people, want peace above all.” To his credit, I think the author achieves that hope. The novel begins with a 1970s film director uncovering the remains of a Russian soldier, foreshadowing that Tretyakov will remain “forever nineteen.” The reader sees his uncertainty as a young officer, his tenacity and courage in battle, his frustration at being wounded. We admire his stoicism. Tretyakov thinks, “You live, they bury you, and then it’s as if you had never existed…” (p. 36). Yet he commits to his duty: “But once the wheel has rolled free, crunching people, crunching bones, then there is no choice. There is only one thing to do: to stop it, to keep it from rolling over more lives” (p. 81). We smile at his infatuation with Sasha, a young woman he meets during his convalescence, and secretly hope the narrator was wrong, that when Tretyakov is wounded again during a German counter-attack, this time he will be taken off the front-lines for good, the war will end, and he’ll marry Sasha and live happily ever after. But then it wouldn’t be a Russian novel.

FOREVER NINETEEN falls within the sub-genre of Russian novels about the noble soldier defending Mother Russia against the Fascist hordes (e.g., VASILY TYORKIN). There’s a brief mention of Tretyakov feeling ashamed of his father’s arrest, though he knew his father “wasn’t guilty of anything” (p. 83), a passage that normally would not have survived Soviet censors. Otherwise, the novel avoids any mention of the Stalin purges, winning the State Prize of the USSR. Baklanov wrote that the novel was his “‘obelisk of memory’ to the military generation” (grigorybaklanov.com). For what it’s worth, FOREVER NINETEEN does not glorify war. The verso of the title page is a photograph of Russian soldiers studying a map. In the foreground lies what appears to be a bloody corpse. Tretyakov’s hospital compatriots are missing arms and legs. The reader can appreciate the author’s “obelisk” as a way of honoring all those who have suffered the costs of war.

[Hải Lưu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chán

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.49 stars.

Hard to review. Perhaps it's really "non-fiction fiction" -- the author's WW II experience written as a novel. It would be easy to write a spoiler, so I'll stop. Suffice it to say, the author reports (perhaps in the preface?) that from his 1939 school graduating class of 20, all the males went to war and he was the only one to live.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I happened upon this book while weeding the fiction section of our school library for an upcoming move. As a big fan of "All quiet on the western front" I wondered if it was a Russian version during WWII. It does have anti-war aspects as "All quiet" does, as well as the relationships that soldiers have with each other in wartime. But I found it a bit lacking in that the characters weren't totally developed. While there is a relationship between Volodya Tretyakov and Sasha, it never quite goes deep enough. Nor does the relationship between Tretyakov and his troops.
But all in all, it was an enjoyable read, giving me some insight to what it was like to be a soldier in the Red army in WWII.

[Olea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Curiozitatea de a citi scriitori tinuti la obroc si publicati tirziu, in timpul sau dupa perestroika, m-a adus si la aceasta carte. Cum zicea un critic rus cunoscut, Viktor Cealmaev, Baklanov este dintre scriitorii care perpetueaza calitatea "cuvintului rus", si anume capacitatea de a exprima "durerea universala a tuturor".
"In veci de nouasprezece ani" - avem, deci, de a face cu un roman de razboi, tragic. Titlul spune cam totul...
"Mezinul" este de aceeasi factura - propaga suferinta si vulnerabilitatea.