Novellas and short stories

Andrei Platonov (born Andrei Platonovich Klimentov, 1899–1951) was a Russian writer, playwright, and poet. Andrei Platonov served as a front-line correspondent during the Russian Civil War. Later, holding the rank of captain, he served as a military correspondent for the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda during the Great Patriotic War.The writer’s vast life and military experience formed the basis of his rich literary legacy. The most striking feature of A. Platonov’s prose is his original language, unparalleled in Russian literature.The theme of the novella The Hidden Man (1927) is the Russian Civil War and all the horrors it brought: grief, wandering, and death. The protagonist of the novella Kotlovan (1930), Voschev, is searching for the meaning of life. In trying to find answers to eternal questions, he loses himself in work—digging an excavation pit.The story The Sand Teacher (1927) is set in Central Asia. A young teacher arrives at a school by appointment. The enthusiasm with which she begins her work soon gives way to confusion: the hungry and sick students attend classes irregularly, and the local people, exhausted by their struggle against the sand, have no interest in the school.A lightning strike blinded the experienced engineer Maltsev, the protagonist of the story In the Beautiful and Furious World (1937). Blinded, he could see the track on which he regularly ran; the signals worked, and the engine obeyed him, although another train stood ahead on the track of the speeding express.Platonov said of his characters—and of his people: “They lived a full and communal life with nature and history, and in those years history raced along like a locomotive, hauling up the hill the world’s burden of poverty, despair, and humble inertia.”For middle school students