The Life of Arseniev: Youth

Synopsis

Ivan Bunin was the first Russian writer of the twentieth century to be award the Nobel Prize in literature. Like many other Russian writers, he emigrated after the Revolution and never returned to his homeland; The Life of Arseniev is the major work of his émigré period. In ways similar to Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Bunin's novel powerfully evokes the atmosphere of Russia in the decades before the Revolution and illuminates those Russian literary and cultural traditions eradicated in the Soviet era.