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Audiobook edition · 8 h 1 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when two brothers seek different escapes from a village neither can leave behind?
In Durnovka, hunger, drink and old cruelties shape daily life. Tikhon Krasov, a shopkeeper and innkeeper, trusts money, work and caution to protect him from the poverty he knows. His younger brother, Kuzma, reads and writes verse, searching instead for meaning. They share a beginning, but their hopes pull them along opposite roads.
Around them, the old order loses its hold. News of the unrest of 1905 reaches the village in scraps and rumors, bringing a wider crisis close to home. In The Village, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin looks beneath shops, weddings and quarrels to ask how poverty, ignorance and inherited cruelty shape both ordinary people and a nation.
What you’ll discover
- Brothers on opposite roads Follow Tikhon and Kuzma as money and meaning offer different answers to the same hard beginnings.
- Country life without comfort Enter Durnovka, where neighbors, rivals and drinkers reveal a countryside stripped of reassuring illusions.
- Unrest at the door Feel the uncertainty as scraps of news bring Russia’s wider turmoil into village life.
- A nation in daily life Explore Bunin’s suggestion that a country’s troubles take root in everyday poverty and cruelty.
- A poet’s close attention Discover plain, closely observed storytelling that leaves you room to judge what you see.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy Russian fiction, sharp portraits of village life, brothers in conflict, and a close eye on weather, food, songs and speech.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Ownership gives Tikhon no purpose
- Success cannot quiet Tikhon's fear
- Revolt exposes the master's fragile power
- Tikhon's desire spreads harm beyond himself
- Kuzma understands more than he changes
- Village life draws Kuzma into helplessness
- Blame reaches beyond the landowners
- The country emerges through everyday sensations
Who’s who
- Tikhon Ilitch KrasoffA tall, hard peddler's son turned shop and estate owner, who hoards grain and longs for a child to leave it to.
- Kuzma Ilitch KrasoffTikhon's younger brother, a self-taught reader and failed poet who calls himself an anarchist and cannot stop judging his own people.
- Nastasya PetrovnaTikhon's swollen, prayerful wife, who has lost every child and keeps lamps, fortune books and pigs to fill her days.
- The BrideA young woman of Durnovka with lowered lashes and a closed face, who works the farm and wants a home of her own.
- RodkaA thin, one-eyed soldier who becomes the Bride's husband and village Elder, and turns jealous and violent.
- DeniskaSyery's short-legged, sing-song son, a cobbler and reader of little books who returns from Tula without work and hopes to earn easy money.
- SyeryDeniska's father, a gray, talkative peasant who dreams of a fine farmstead and spends his days waiting with a cold pipe.
- YakoffA secretive, greedy Durnovka peasant who keeps his grain, hides his thoughts behind a grin, and wants more land.
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The Village
by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin · 1910
Two brothers, a peddler's sons, try to hold on to a Russian estate as the countryside around them turns restless.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“neither a candle to God nor a pitchfork to the devil”
In short
What happens to a family that climbs out of poverty on cruelty and cunning, and then finds the climb has led nowhere? The Village, written by Ivan Bunin in 1909, asks that question of two brothers, Tikhon and Kuzma Krasoff.
The Village at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 30 min3 h 35 min fast, 5 h 20 min slow
- Length
- 63,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1910by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A peddler's son becomes master of Vorgol
The novel opens with the Krasoff family tree, and it is not a pretty one. The great-grandfather lures away his lord's mistress and is hunted down with wolfhounds. The grandfather robs churches. The father is a peddler who drinks himself to death.
His sons, Tikhon and Kuzma, take to the roads with a covered cart and nearly cut each other's throats over the profits. Tikhon takes over a posting house at Vorgol, opens a liquor shop and a store, and works without rest. He marries a princess's elderly maid, and her dowry brings him the estate of the broken Durnovo family. So the hunted man's descendant ends up owning the hunter's land.
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Details
- First published
- 1910
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 5 h 10 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich. The Village. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-village.
Bunin, I. A. (2026). The village. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-village (Original work published 1910)
Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich. The Village. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-village.
@book{bunin2026village,
author = {Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich},
title = {The Village},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-village},
note = {First published 1910}
}
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What is The Village by Ivan Bunin about?
It follows two brothers, the hard trader Tikhon and the failed poet Kuzma Krasoff, as they manage a run-down estate in a poor Russian village around the time of the first revolution, and it shows their world without softening it.
When was The Village written and is it a true story?
Bunin finished it in 1909. It is fiction, but it grows out of the author's observations of country life in central Russia, and it draws on real events such as the war with Japan and the revolt of 1905.
Who are Tikhon and Kuzma Krasoff?
They are brothers born into poverty in a county town. Tikhon becomes a rich shopkeeper and landowner by cunning and thrift, while Kuzma is a restless reader and failed writer who goes to work on his brother's farm.
The author
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
1870–1953 · Russian novelist and poet
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was a Russian writer and poet born in Voronezh in 1870. He wrote poetry, short stories and novels. His novel The Village appeared in 1910. He left Russia in 1920 and lived in France. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933 and died in Paris in 1953.
“neither a candle to God nor a pitchfork to the devil”
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