The Directorate of the program "Ulyanovsk - UNESCO City of Literature" continues the "Book for Summer" column, where guests talk about their favorite books for summer reading. Today, books are recommended by a prose writer from Ulyanovsk, Tatyana Filatova.

The book "Finist - a clear falcon", Andrei Rubanov

There is a reader's opinion that in the summer you want to read about summer. In any case, there are books that fill your summer with magic, even if you spend it in the city. While reading stories about distant wanderings and magical forests, familiar things will suddenly seem different, and you yourself will want to go on a boat to meet the Volga sunrises.
I want to share a book that leaves vivid impressions. It is good to read it in the summer. Finist the Clear Falcon is a fantasy novel by contemporary writer Andrei Rubanov. The book is the winner of the National Bestseller Literary Award, the winner of the 2018 Readers' Award.

It is based on the plot of Russian folk tales about a young man who can turn into a falcon, and a girl who fell in love with him. As the publishing house writes, “This is an oral visit. It has never been spelled out." The little girl Marya, the youngest daughter of the blacksmith, set off from her native home in iron shoes, with an iron staff and iron bread, for the young bird-man Finist, whom she barely knew and whom she fell in love with. Wounded by the will of Marya's sisters, Finist is waiting for her in distant Vertograd, a place unknown to people, and no one believes that Marya will get there. Three men meet on her way, fall in love with Marya and tell her story. The three-part composition plunges us into the story of great love, the power of man, the power of nature at the dawn of time. The novel plunges into fabulous antiquity, captivates with amazing poetic language and, of course, with the main characters-narrators.

Even a short excerpt from this book is fascinating: “The place from which we set off could no longer be distinguished in the solid wall of the forest, which approached the very water, and the sky above the green wall opened wider, filled with amber light and rolled, from east to west, in long translucent clouds. Several birds soared at an unattainable height: falcons or hawks, it was impossible to tell. Perhaps they were all werewolves, birdmen. Swallows attacked our boat from under the sandy cliff, in a long, crackling flock, made a warning circle and returned to their nests. Perhaps they too were werewolves. Perhaps the whole world existed according to rules unknown to me.
For those who want to read, I wish you a wonderful immersion in the world of this book.

Where the Crawfish Sing book by Delia OwensThere is a reader's opinion that in the summer you want to read about summer. In any case, there are books that fill your summer with magic, even if you spend it in the city. While reading stories about distant wanderings and magical forests, familiar things will suddenly seem different, and you yourself will want to go on a boat to meet the Volga sunrises.
I want to share a book that leaves vivid impressions. It is good to read it in the summer. Finist the Clear Falcon is a fantasy novel by contemporary writer Andrei Rubanov. The book is the winner of the National Bestseller Literary Award, the winner of the 2018 Readers' Award.

It is based on the plot of Russian folk tales about a young man who can turn into a falcon, and a girl who fell in love with him. As the publishing house writes, “This is an oral visit. It has never been spelled out." The little girl Marya, the youngest daughter of the blacksmith, set off from her native home in iron shoes, with an iron staff and iron bread, for the young bird-man Finist, whom she barely knew and whom she fell in love with. Wounded by the will of Marya's sisters, Finist is waiting for her in distant Vertograd, a place unknown to people, and no one believes that Marya will get there. Three men meet on her way, fall in love with Marya and tell her story. The three-part composition plunges us into the story of great love, the power of man, the power of nature at the dawn of time. The novel plunges into fabulous antiquity, captivates with amazing poetic language and, of course, with the main characters-narrators.

Even a short excerpt from this book is fascinating: “The place from which we set off could no longer be distinguished in the solid wall of the forest, which approached the very water, and the sky above the green wall opened wider, filled with amber light and rolled, from east to west, in long translucent clouds. Several birds soared at an unattainable height: falcons or hawks, it was impossible to tell. Perhaps they were all werewolves, birdmen. Swallows attacked our boat from under the sandy cliff, in a long, crackling flock, made a warning circle and returned to their nests. Perhaps they too were werewolves. Perhaps the whole world existed according to rules unknown to me.
For those who want to read, I wish you a wonderful immersion in the world of this book.

Where the Crawfish Sing book by Delia Owens

They say every book is an opportunity to live another life. The book I'm about to discuss is about living life in the woods of North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s, in a cabin in a swamp with a little "bog girl" Kia.

Delia Owens' Where the Crayfish Sing is a touching story of growing up as a child abandoned in the wilderness, full of trials, hopes and disappointments, surrounded by shady forests, colorful birds, wild flowers, and the screams of seagulls. This novel is at the same time the story of growing up from infancy to maturity, the story of true love, a shaded story of attraction, the story of an exiled man, a detective story with the disclosure of a murder, a story of inequality of races and sexes, and finally, a real hymn to nature, since the author of the book is a zoologist.

“Where the crayfish sing” is a set expression denoting the wilderness. Can a person survive in the wilderness without the help of other people? “... plunged deeper into the silence of nature. Probably, nature is the most reliable support in the world, the only thing worth holding on to.

The book is permeated with the sounds and smells of the wild forest, the coolness of winding rivers, the joy and sadness of a vulnerable and strong girl living among the swamps.

This is the author's debut book, it has sold over 4 million copies. The book has been nominated for several literary awards, and in Russia it won the Readers' Choice Award in the Foreign Literature nomination from the largest book recommendation service LiveLib in 2020.

If “summer is a small life”, then you can live it with this book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tatyana Filatova was born and lives in Ulyanovsk. Laureate of the Belsky Prostory magazine at the end of 2019 in the prose nomination, winner of the Interregional Gathering of Young Writers in Bolshoy Boldino, winner of the Stylists of Good literary competition (Chelyabinsk, 2020) in the Prose nomination. In 2020, she participated in the All-Russian Literary and Publishing Forum "Authorization - 2020" in St. Petersburg.