Seryozha (novel)

Seryozha (Russian: Серёжа, published 1955) is a short novel by Soviet writer Vera Panova. Seryozha has also been translated as Time Walked and A Summer to Remember. Seryozha is a diminutive form of the name Sergey.

Seryozha

Frontispiece illustration to a Russian edition of Seryozha published in Leningrad in 1965
Author	Vera Panova
Language	Russian
Publication date	1955
Publication place	Soviet Union

Plot

Seryozha is the story of a young boy living in the rural Soviet Union in the mid-1950s. The novel describes Seryozha's experiences, and those of his family, friends and neighbors over the course of a summer. The most important event of the story is the marriage of Seryozha's mother to a Red Army veteran named Dmitry Korostelyev. Korostelyev becomes the new manager of the local collective farm and a strong role model for Seryozha. Throughout the novel Panova gives a relatively grim picture of life in the rural Soviet Union where both money and opportunity are scarce. The novel ends with Korostelyev being reassigned to a new collective farm in the remote Arkhangelsky District, and taking the family with him.

Quote

Panova said of the genesis of Seryozha:

"The soul of a child was revealed to me, the revelation engendered reflection, my reflections became clothed in images- and there appeared Seryozha."^[1]

English translations

• Time Walked, Harvill Press, 1957.
• A Summer to Remember, Thomas Yoseloff, 1962.
• Selected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.

Screen version

The story was brought to the screen in the 1960 film Seryozha by Georgi Daneliya and Igor Talankin.^[2]