BREAD

In a river town beyond the Urals, grain promises a fortune-and bread can become a weapon.

Galaktion has the energy to remake his world. Steamers, mills and new commercial alliances offer a route out of the old merchant order. Around him, bankers tighten their hold on the town, marriages become bargains, and friendship acquires the language of debt. Everyone has a plan for prosperity. Few ask who will pay for it.

As private ambitions entangle the families of Zapolye, Ustenka seeks an education and a useful life of her own. Her intelligence exposes the cruelty behind respectable appearances, yet understanding a man is no protection against being drawn to him. When harvests fail, the promises of progress face their most terrible test: the means to feed a district may also become the means to exploit its hunger.

Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's Bread brings together the breadth of a social novel, the intimacy of family tragedy and the sharp humour of provincial life. Its merchants, pilgrims, officials, workers and formidable women inhabit a landscape where money changes hands more easily than responsibility.

Translated and edited by M. Smouch, this complete English edition preserves the novel's five parts and nine-chapter epilogue. It includes an original editorial preface and afterword, the author's three explanatory notes, and separate translator's notes on historical language, customs and references.