Broken Life, or Oberon's Magical Horn

«Broken Life, or Oberon's Magical Horn» — poignant and bright memories of Valentina Kataev about his childhood years, the beloved city of Odessa «with its… lovely, deaf streets lined with white acacias», about his mother and younger brother Zhenya — one of the future authors of «The Twelve Chairs», Evgeny Petrov, tragically killed during the Great Patriotic War. The separate fragments that make up the novel are connected by a unified artistic intent and inner dynamics, permeated with the spirit of the time. Toy rocking horses and gilded nuts on the Christmas tree; the world championship in French wrestling and the advent of the wireless telegraph; the first flight on an airplane by the famous wrestler Ivan Zaikin and his friend — the outstanding writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin; the victory at the «cyclodrome» of the celebrated aviator and racer Sergey Utochkin; the dangerous adventure of Zhenya's brother on an old fishing barge and the secret journey with his friend Yurka to the Turkish fortress of Akkerman — all this, like pieces of a puzzle, forms a complete picture, bright and multicolored, like life itself.