Днепр

The Ukrainian writer Natan Rybak is well known to readers for his novels Pereyaslavskaya Rada and Honore de Balzac's Mistake. N. Rybak is one of the largest historical novelists in modern Ukrainian literature. His books have been translated into many languages, and the epic "Pereyaslavskaya Rada" was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree. The novel "Dnepr" was written by the author in the late thirties, and in the fifties it was radically revised. This book tells about the events that took place in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, in the Kherson region, on the eve of the First World War and about the struggle of the Ukrainian people against foreign intervention in 1918-1919. In the first part of the novel, a broad picture of the life of raftsmen - timber raftsmen, farm laborers and workers of the timber merchant Danil Kashpur, who dreamed of becoming the first capitalist, the richest owner in Ukraine, is developed. The war, and then the revolution, prevented the implementation of his plans. The class struggle intensifies in the villages. Rafters went to the partisans. The main characters of the novel - Marko Vysokos, Kirilo Kazhan, the brothers Chornoguzy, Mark's father - the communist Kremen in the ranks of the revolutionary troops come to grips with the interventionists. The village kulaks and the landlord lackeys are thrown over to the side first of the occupying Germans, then of Petliura. The novel ends with battle scenes of the defeat of the invaders and the liberation of Kherson. The book is written in a romantic vein. The image of the great river - the Dnieper, connects all the events together, colors the experiences of the characters with special emotionality, gives the whole story a major and majesty.