Prishvin

The life of Mikhail Prishvin (1873-1954), a careless and impudent student, expelled from the Yelets gymnasium due to the report of his teacher V. V. Rozanov, an insecure young man, a Marxist who ended up in prison for revolutionary views, a student at Leipzig University, a naturalist writer and researcher of sectarianism, who gained the condescending attention of Z. N. Gippius, D. S. Merezhkovsky, and A. A. Blok, a villager who said many bitter words about the Russian village and peasants, and finally, a decorated individual favored by the authorities, is as interesting and colorful as his deep and meaningful thoughts about it. The writer dedicated his life to the search for happiness; he also wrote his books about happiness—and life did not deceive him.
This is the first detailed biography of Prishvin, written by the writer and literary scholar Alexei Varlamov. The author presents his hero in all the complexity of his character and fate, removing the textbook gloss from the astonishing life of one of the greatest Russian thinkers of the 20th century.