The Darkness Falls on the Old Steps

The novel "The Darkness Falls on the Old Steps", recognized as the best work of the 2000s (the "Russian Booker of the Decade" award, 2011), is based on the author's family history. Alexander Pavlovich Chudakov, one of the greatest Russian philologists of the 20th century, grew up in an intelligent family, fatefully cast away to the ends of the earth - to Shchukin, a town for exiles on the border of Russia and Kazakhstan. In the harsh post-war years, under the constant threat of new repressions and the absence of the most basic necessities, the main character's family managed not only to survive: like new Robinsons, these people restore the lost civilization. Despite everything, they managed not to become embittered and to remain faithful to their parents' teachings.