Melting of the snow, by: Elias Ehrnburg

The Arab reader knows Russian literature through Dostoevsky, Tchekhov, and Tolstoy... and others from this pioneering generation that appeared and shined before the Bolshevik Revolution. After this great generation, it seemed as if Russia had left the field of novel-writing forever, until the world began to hear again about Russian literature at the beginning of the third millennium through novelists such as Lyudmila Petrushchevskaya, Lyudmila Oletskaya, and Evgeny Vodolazkin. When Al-Mahrousa now publishes the novel "Melting Snow," it confirms to the reader that Russia has regained its literary stature half a century before the emergence of new millennium writers. Ehrenborg published this novel in 1954 to condemn the Stalin era, just as the novels of the founding generation of Russian literature condemned the Tsarist eras. The ideological and political dimensions were not the only reasons that prompted Saad Zahran to translate this novel, but we can also say that what drove him to translate it in the sixties of the twentieth century — affirming his critical agreement with Stalinism — is the same reason that makes us now translate it, making it suitable for reading and sparking passion after decades of its publication. This means that it is a remarkable novel and a continuation of what we know about Russian literature: a sensitive human touch and a deep insight into events and characters. This is confirmed by the fact that Russian writers did not cease from creativity except for a very brief period during Stalin's rule. Number of pages: 212