Andrej Gelasimov. “Nežnyj vozrast” (Una tenera età). Presentazione

Abstract

Before publishing novels, Andrej Gelasimov (1966-) was an author of longer short stories (povesti in Russian). With his first povesti he won many literary prizes and the favour of critics. Gelasimov has been praised for his brilliant stylistic mixture of colloquialism and humour, which gives freshness and immediacy to his prose. One of his stories, “Nežnyj vozrast” (2000), here published in Italian as “Una tenera età”, offers a good example of the aforementioned technique. By means of the private journal of a 14-year-old Russian teenager, the author unravels the story of the encounter between the young boy and an aged music teacher.