Cursed and killed

Astafyev worked for a long time over the epic novel -epic - from 1990 to 1994. - And he did not write the planned last, third book, but this did not prevent the work from becoming one of the most powerful and piercing samples of the Russian "military" prose.
The very name of the novel that came from the writings of the Russian Old Believers is unusual: "Everyone who sows to confuse the earth, wars and fratricide, will be cursed and killed by God.
Everything is just as unusual in this epic - the idea of ​​war as a punishment of God sent to the people for the horrors of the revolution and the rejection of faith, the ultimate realism in the descriptions of the soldier’s life, surprisingly sincere and folk patriotism, combined with an equally deep and folk rejection " advisers". There was nothing like this in the Russian "military" prose either before or after the amazing epic of Astafyev