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This volume contains a selection of early works by Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko who blazed a trail for a generation of Soviet poets with a confident poetic voice that moves effortlessly between social and personal themes. ‘Zima Junction’ vividly describes his idyllic childhood in Siberia and his impressions of home after a long absence in Moscow. Private moments are captured in ‘Waking’, on the joys of discovering the unexpected in a lover, and ‘Birthday’, on a mother’s concern for her son, while ‘Encounter’ depicts an unexpected meeting with Hemingway in Copenhagen. ‘The Companion’ and ‘Party Card’ show war from a child’s eye, whether playing while oblivious to German bombs falling nearby or discovering a fatally wounded soldier in the forest, while Yevtushenko’s famous poem, ‘Babiy Yar’, is an angry exposé of the Nazi massacre of the Jews of Kiev.
“A literary colossus.”
—The Economist
“The Soviet superbard.”
—Time
“These poems beat and tumble and thrash with life.”
—The Daily Telegraph (London)
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