Ivan Bunin received the Nobel Prize in 1933 — in exile, in Paris, without a homeland, without an income, without hope of return. The money went quickly: he gave it away, treated everyone, never knew how to keep it.
He was born in Voronezh in 1870, into an impoverished noble family. He never finished school — his brother taught him. He read everything. He began as a poet, then turned to prose. Antonov Apples, The Village, Dry Valley — a Russia in the act of vanishing, the smell of moldering leaves and horse harness.
He hated the revolution. Cursed Days, his diary of 1918–1919, is horror, fury, pain. He emigrated in 1920 and never went back.
Dark Avenues, a book of love stories, was written during the war, in Grasse. Love in Bunin is always tragedy, always loss. He died in Paris in 1953 and lies buried at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.