RRP: £15.95
BINDING: Hardback
PUBLISHED: 2007
ISBN: 9780946162758
PAGES: 539
Yury Tynyanov
Young Pushkin
Translated from the Russian by Anna Kurkina Rush and Christopher Rush
Yury Tynyanov’s novel on the formative years of Russia’s greatest poet was first published in serial form between 1935 and 1943. In a blend of encyclopedic knowledge and creative imagination, he thrillingly brings the people of early 19th-century Russia to life – from his schoolfriends and his family descended from his great-grandfather Abram Hannibal, Peter the Great’s protégé, to peasants, actresses and exotic hostesses, leading figures of state and Tsar Alexander I himself – and at the centre of it all the growing Pushkin, explosive, unpredictable, constantly scribbling verses, having relationships with women twice his age, living it up in the capital before being sent into exile for his reckless writings. Tynyanov did not live to complete his planned trilogy on Pushkin’s whole life, but this novel, taking the already formidable poet into his early 20s as he begins his exile, soon acquired classic status in Russia. This is the first English translation.
‘A sparkling jewel of a historical novel.’– Simon Sebag Montefiore
‘A great Russian novel is now available to the English reading public, for which we must be profoundly grateful.’– David McLaurin, The Tablet
‘Vivid and fascinating … Young Pushkin is a pleasure to be savoured.’– Philippa Gregory
YURY TYNYANOV (1894–1943) was an influential literary scholar and critic of the 1920s and a leading member of the Formalist group before achieving renown as a writer of historical fiction. He is the author of three novels and a number of short stories and novellas. Keenly aware of the potential of the cinema, he caught the attention of Sergey Eisenstein, whose plans for filming the novel on Pushkin were forestalled by Tynyanov's death. Only one of his novels, translated as Death and Diplomacy in Persia, and two novellas (including Lieutenant Kizhe, subject of a symphonic suite by Prokofiev) have hitherto appeared in English.