The Story of a Life

In 1943, the Soviet Union's most revered author, Konstantin Paustovsky, started out on his masterwork - The Story of a Life; a grand, sprawling memoir of a life lived on the fast-unfurling frontiers of Russian history. Originally published in six volumes, it would cement Paustovsky's reputation as the voice of Russia around the world, and see him nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Newly translated by Guggenheim fellow Douglas Smith, Vintage Classics are proud to reintroduce the first three volumes of Paustovsky's epic for a whole new generation. Taking its reader from Paustovsky's Ukrainian childhood and youth, struggling with a family on the verge of collapse and first flourishes of creative ambition, to his experiences as a paramedic on Russia's frontlines, and then as a journalist aspiring to cover the country's many revolutions, TheStory of a Life not only offers the portrait of an artistic life like no other, but opens a window into the turmoil of one of modern history's most chaotic moments.