The Village (Annotated)

Ivan Bunin's The Village is a bleak, unsparing portrait of rural Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, centered on the Krasov brothers and the moral, economic, and spiritual disintegration of peasant life. Written in a hard, lucid prose that resists sentimental populism, the novel dismantles idealized visions of the countryside then common in Russian literature. Its realism is severe, almos...