The Tale of a Real Man

The foundation of the "Tale" is the amazing fate of the ace pilot Alexei Petrovich Maresyev, whose life became an example of courage, indomitable will, and resilience. Field correspondent for the newspaper "Pravda," he went through the Great Patriotic War and collected a vast amount of factual material. The meeting with the famous pilot took place in August 1943, and his story was recorded by the writer in the "Diary of the 3rd Squadron Flight." Three years later, Polevoi returned to his "Diary" and created a book about the heroism of the legless pilot in just a few weeks. The "Tale" was published in 1946 and brought the author nationwide love and fame, and just two years later, a feature film starring Pavel Kadotchnikov and an opera of the same name by Sergei Prokofiev were created based on it.

Boris Nikolayevich Polevoi (1908–1981) was a famous Soviet prose writer, screenwriter, and journalist, a laureate of state awards, and the author of the legendary "Tale of a Real Man," which has undergone dozens of reissues and has been translated into many languages.