Ryabtsev's Russia

Kostya Ryabtsev's Diary: Scenes of School Life, September 1923-June 1924 by N. Ognev

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Every time I look at my tattered, silverfish infested, secondhand Kostya Ryabtsev's Diary (which, going by its condition, looks like it once belonged to someone from the Weasley Family) I am reminded of 'The Shadow of the Wind' and the whole idea about how the book chooses the reader. This is completely true because Kostya, quite literally, adopted me.
There I was, with my two cousins, moving stack after stack of dirty, dusty books in a second hand book shop, when this small, hardbound book fell on my head leaving me with more than swear-words! I bought this little rascal for just 40 bucks, hardly realising that not only was this book extremely rare, but it had also survived Nazi book burning and N.Ognev , the forgotten author of this brilliant book, was someone the Soviet Russians named their bravery awards after! For me, it was nothing more than a Soviet book, then. However, it was while listing it on Goodreads, that my friend, Navdeep and I found out a little more about Kostya and the man who wrote his Diary.

I wonder how many people have actually read this book or have a copy of it lying somewhere in the dusty corners of their houses. However, if you can find this book, go get it! Having read it, I will describe this book as the forerunner of all epistolary teenage novels like Adrian Mole, Abby Hayes and the like, and cannot stop loving Kostya despite the fact that he has very strong political views, is hardly a feminist and to quite an extent, a propagandist because despite all his faults, he's witty, humorous and in every way, a normal, adolescent boy who is naughty, sexually conscious and deeply emotional. Of course, the story of Kostya and his friends will always remain incomplete unless I get extremely lucky once again and its sequel decides to adopt me, too in some other secondhand bookshop, but the story will remain special to me for a lot of reasons like the fact that Ognev is my first Russian author (if I don't count the short stories). However,what makes the book even more special is that N. Ognev happens to be a pseudonym of Mikhail Gregorovich (something that will ring a bell in every Potterhead!)



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