On March 3, 1899, Yuri Olesha was born. “The time of magicians has passed. They probably never existed,” is how the book “The Three Fat Men” begins, his most popular book. Or rather, the only one known to the general public.
State Literary Museum
Yuri Olesha. 1958
In the mid-1920s, his colleagues admired Olesha’s light “Mozartian” imagination and metaphors: Kataev, Bulgakov, Paustovsky, Ilf, Babel and their journalistic feuilletons were truly tremendously popular among readers. In 1927 he published the novel “Envy”, then “Three Fat Men” was published, written in 1924, and a few years later, a collection of short stories and a play. And that’s it. From 1931 until his death in 1960, Olesha finished nothing he started.
“Heine, born in 1801, called himself the first man of the 19th century. Born at the other end of the century, I can call myself its last man.” Read about how he lived, wrote and loved Yuri Olesha in Rodina’s material.
