In this epic novel of the U.S.S.R. in the 1950s, a new generation of Gradovs--whom readers first met in Generations of Winter--takes center stage. Boris has turned to womanizing to forget the devastation of his mother's defection. Yolka catches the eye of the secret police chief and is thrown into a nightmare. Even aging patriarch Boris III is not safe in a world drowning in corruption.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In this sequel, Boris and Yolka, the grandchildren of Dr. Boris Gradov, struggle to find themselves in the aftermath of World War II. Boris, who has just returned from occupied Poland, seeks to recapture his lost youth by becoming a playboy and racing motorcycles. Along the way he meets Vasily, Stalin's son, and then decides to attend medical school. Meanwhile, cousin Yolka, a beautiful music student, inadvertently attracts the fancy of the lecherous head of the secret police and is abducted. Boris convinces Vasily to intercede with his father for her release. To complicate matters, Dr. Gradov ends up in jail, a victim of Stalin's machinations. Stalin's death provides an unexpected catalyst to the family's fate.
From Publishers Weekly
The author of that magnificent Tolstoyan epic of 20th-century Russia, Generations of Winter, continues here the saga of the Gradov family as it endures the postwar privations, the increasingly manic suspicions of Stalin and the louche sexual brigandage of secret police chief Beria. Old Gradov, the surgeon, incurs Stalin's enmity when he tells him he must change his ways in the face of deteriorating health; when he also fails to condemn the Jewish doctors accused of trying to murder the dictator, his removal to a jail cell is inevitable. Meanwhile, his grandson Boris IV, typical of postwar Soviet youth, develops a passion for sports and becomes an ace motorcycle racer on an Air Force team led by Stalin's son, Sasha. When Beria kidnaps Boris's beautiful young cousin as a prelude to his customary "courtship," that relationship comes in handy. Kirill, the politically "safe" member of the clan, is obviously destined to wind up in the (brilliantly evoked) penal colony of Kolyma, with his ever-loyal Stalinist wife Celia. As before, the tapestry is vast and richly colored, the personal and political skillfully blended, and the whole saga is suffused with a peculiar Russian blend of satire, heartfelt sentiment and surrealism. Like other contemporary Russian writers, Aksyonov seems compelled to try to penetrate into the souls of monsters like Stalin and Beria to see how and why they held his nation in thrall. Only the Dos Passos-like "interludes" of contemporary press reportage strike a too-easy sardonic note in this harrowing, transcendent panorama.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A solid second volume in the series...,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Winter's Hero : A Novel (Hardcover)
This book is really every bit the equal of its predecessor (Generations of Winter), to paraphrase Kirkus Reviews. I actually prefer this volume and Generations over most of Aksyonov's other "fantantic" tales, primarily because I'm more fond of the realistic and essentially optimistic tradition in Russian literature. These two books are practically in the same league as the great novels of Tolstoy and Sholohov.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant conclusion to a contemporary masterpiece.,
By Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Winter's Hero (Hardcover)
Touted as on a par with WAR AND PEACE, also written by a Russian, this novel is red in every way. The binding is even a vivid red, the most prominent color of the book jacket, also. Published by Random House, this followup to a former major saga of Russian hierachy is by the author of eight previous novels.He uses a lyrical manner in mingling fiction with historical characters (my favorite reading at the moment), this sequel and conclusion to GENERATIONS OF WINTER brings to life the major Russian leaders of which we have heard. It is a game of shadows and light filled with Kremlin secrets and escapes from prison and labor camps in Russia by some of the characters, illuminating the Soviet experience with history of the Soviet Union. This story follows the descendants of the Moscow surgeon Boris Gradov, who held a high-ranking medical position which puts him in the same surroundings with such as Lenin (original name, Ulyanov), Stalin who used the pseudonym meaning "Steel" and originally Dzhugashvili and it projects that he had six toes on his left foot, and others just as important. Nicholas II was the last Russian czar and was executed in 1918. He is a peripheral figure, as is later Khrushchev (whom we all remember as taking off his shoe at the United Nations and hitting it on a table for the world to see). The marvelous composer, Rimsky-Korsakov was also involved like so many others with the strange names so hard to pronounce but even harder to spell. The hero of the Gradov family was termed a "modern-day Titan." Simile was the means to describe unthought of happenings; it is hard to decide whether they might have happened or are just figments of one's imagination. The translators used descriptive terms and phrasing for mundane things. John Glad had previously taught Russian literature at the University of Chicago, my son Geoffrey's alma mater. Christopher D. Morris resided in Prague, a place where our inimitable editor of the alternative weekly paper in Knoxville, Barry Henderson, had held forth. Vassily Aksyonov teaches at a university in Virginia and could not get published in the Soviet Union. Besides writing fiction, he is a dramatist and screenwriter. He remembers that Stalin, before becoming paranoid, used the cinema for the masses on a political and spiritual level in the spirit of socialism. Sometimes the long, strangely-spelled Russian names got in the way of the story but overall it was a good eye's veiw of Russian life and politics.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Aksyonov,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Winter's Hero : A Novel (Hardcover)
Great book! Aksyonov continues the story from "Generations of Winter" in his own unique style. Any fan of Russian authors should give this book a read. Received the product on time and in good condition.
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