Anatoly Aleksin is the author of numerous stories and short stories for children and adolescents. His works are not included in the school curriculum, but are recommended for extracurricular reading. In his literary work, Alexin exposes human vices and presents it in a form accessible and close to young readers. Although the books of this writer are interesting to adults.
Literary style
Narration Anatoly Aleksin, as a rule, leads in the first person. Some pages of his works are oversaturated with melodramatism. But there is so much subtle psychological observation in them that, perhaps, there is no better way to convey the essence of morality to a child than to offer to read one of the books of this author.
Facts from the biography
The future writer was born in 1924. Alexinâs articles were published in Pioneer Truth and other newspapers before the war. But seriously, prose, the hero of our story was carried away later. The author of "youthful prose" is the son of a repressed communist. He grew up in Moscow and was educated here. During the war years he was evacuated, where he worked at a construction site.
In 1970, for one of his scripts, the writer was awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize. In 1978 - the State Prize of the USSR. In 1993, Alexin emigrated to Israel, and since 2011 has been living with his family in Luxembourg.
Already in childhood, Anatoly Aleksin began to write. His biography says that, despite the arrest of his father, the life of the young man was developing quite favorably. At twenty-six, the writer published his first collection of short stories. In the seventies in the capital's theaters staged plays according to his scripts. Some works have been filmed.
How a poet became a prose writer
In his youth, Anatoly Aleksin wrote poetry. They were praised, published. But one day, during the "Congress of Young Writers", the poet came to a seminar by Samuel Marshak. Novice prose writers and poets read their works. Some Marshak liked, others he criticized. But when Alexinâs turn came, the Soviet poet completely wilted. When Anatoly finished reading, Samuil Yakovlevich sadly asked the unlucky author if he wanted to change his occupation. But Alexin had with him a manuscript of a story about children with disabilities. And so as not to leave with defeat, he read it. At this moment Paustovsky entered the audience. After reading, the writer offered his assistance in editing. But Marshak wept and advised to write only prose. Anatoly Aleksin listened to the advice. Reviews of luminaries of domestic literature became decisive in his fate.
Most of Aleksinâs works were published in the journal Yunost. In the Union of Writers of the RSFSR, he headed the section of children's literature.
Tatyana Aleksina
His only muse was his wife. He lived with her all his life, and although she was always in his shadow, she was an extraordinary person. On the cover of the book âTerror on the Thresholdâ two names are printed: Tatyana Aleksina, Anatoly Aleksin. The photos and pages of the documentary short story âLines of Farewellsâ included in this collection reflect the memories of the writerâs wife about people who were killed by the Stalinist terror. Father Tatyana Aleksina was convicted and sentenced to ten years without the right to correspondence. Until the end of her life, she kept cigarette sheets on which he wrote letters to his mother before being sent to Magadan. Aleksin died in 2014.
Emigration
In exile continued the creative path of the writer. In Israel, he released a series of short stories "Tel Aviv Novels," "Terror on the Threshold." During the tragic events of September 11, the writer was with his wife in New York and witnessed several weeks of puffs of smoke rising and people trying to find their relatives in the wreckage. What they saw formed the basis of the stories and the latest collection published in Israel.
Alexinâs books have been translated into forty-eight languages. The total circulation exceeds one hundred and twenty million copies. The writer is included in the honorary list of Hans Christian Andersen and awarded the Knowledge Association medal for his enormous contribution to educational activities and world literature. In Israel, he created a number of works in which he described the persecution of power that came upon him during his life in the USSR. This topic caused some surprise among those who still remember how many awards and titles the writer received in his homeland.
Since 2011, Anatoly Aleksin has been living with his family in Luxembourg. His adoptive daughter Elena Setunskaya also lives there. She works on television. The ex-husband of Alexinâs daughter is director Karen Shakhnazarov. And it was Elenaâs biography that formed the basis of the script for the famous film âAmerican Daughterâ.
Late prose
Alexin's stories are sad stories from life. The writer has always been able to truthfully and soulfully describe the inner world of a person, regardless of who his hero was - a young man, an elderly woman or a teenage girl. The sincere style, in which the author puts on the reasoning of his character, sometimes resembles a confession.
Late work includes stories about the adult world. And, comparing them with the works of early years, you can see that there is a quiet sadness in them. It is as if the heroes have matured and become wiser with their author. Anatoly Aleksin is a writer whose characters are ordinary people, and they usually have ordinary problems.
His works are devoted to the eternal conflict of the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, selfishness, fidelity and love. Among the later stories can be called "Abandoned monument", "Bachelor", "Igrun" and many others.
âIgrunâ is a work that, unlike most of Alexinâs latest works, tells the story of a teenagerâs life. The main character is a student of a music school, a gifted young pianist living in the world of music. But once on the way home from a music school he is met by a bandit who lives in the neighborhood ... In the story, like in other works of Alexin, there is a subtle sad humor. It should be said that most of his characters are related to the world of music, both in early works and in later ones.
Writer Anatoly Aleksin is the creator of simple stories. They do not have a subtle psychological background, and there are no complicated allegories either. Aleksinâs books are not about politics and not about complex social problems. They are about kindness and love. But that is enough.