Description
THE THAW is the latest work by one of the most distinguished Soviet novelists. It is the story of ordinary people in a provincial town, doctors, school teachers, artists, engineers. It describes them not only in their work but in their private lives and personal relationships. They are neither supermen nor devils but human beings in whom we recognise our own feelings, aspirations, weaknesses; more vividly than many books which set out to describe conditions in the Soviet Union, because, gives us a convincing, unself-conscious, picture of their circumstances.
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In many ways it is a sharp departure from the Soviet literary convention of the past two decades. The theme running through the now of the "thaw"-a thaw not only in the weather but in the political and social climate, the melting of the snow not only on the ground but in people's hearts suggests that the appearance of the book in the Soviet Union is itself the symptom of vital changes. The climate is still uncertain.ย
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THE THAW is the most controversial novel in the Soviet Union today. Published in serial form in the summerย of 1954, it was severely attacked by many authoritative critics including Simonov, the acting head of the Union of Soviet Writers, who devoted nine columns to it in the Literary Gazette. But Ehrenburg's reply was printed in the same Gazette, and the book was published in volume form by the Union of Soviet Writers.
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Attacked again at the Writers' Congress in December '54, Ehrenburg replied:
"You read novels where everything is in its place, every detail of the machines and of production meetings is properly described... but where's the human soul?... I do not delude myself; I know that in THE THAW as in my other books there is much that is imperfect, indeed unfinished. But what I reproach myself with is very different from the reproaches which have been made to me by the critics. If I am still able to write another book I will try to see to it that it is a step forward and not a step aside from my last novel... The final judges are the readers, those of today and of tomorrow."
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The novel, when printed as a volume, carried on its last page a request to readers to discuss it and to send in their opinions. The publishers of this translation judge that it is a story worth reading on its own intrinsic merits. Translated by Manya Harari.
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ISBN:THETHAW
