The Village

Tikhon and Kuzma Krasoff, brothers from a long line of petty criminals, manage to work together long enough to start a business selling sundries from a roving cart, but a dispute over the division of profits forces them apart. Tikhon is content to stay near the old family village in the southwest of Russia and grow his business, but Kuzma has bigger dreams. The Village is Ivan Bunin’s first full novel, and portrays the Russian peasantry in a very different light to how they had previously been idealized. While there’s a physical village in the novel, the village of the title is a reference to