Senya Malina Tells it Like it Was by Stepan Pisakhov: book review

Senya Malina Tells it Like it Was (from 1924, English version 2014) is set in northwest Russia in the rural village of Uyma (Weema) near Arkhangelsk (Archangel).

Written by Russian Stepah Pisakhov (1879-1960), translated by British Blackwell Boyce (1963-), and illustrated by Russian Dmitry Trubin (1962-) it is 40 short stories with the same narrator – Senya Malina.

Senya Malina is a villager – a Pomer (which means ‘the people by the sea’) – who tells tall tales with great embellishment and exaggeration. He calls the people of his village, merritimers (maritimers), and lives with his wife (Missus Malina), horse Karka, dog Rozka, and cat Moorka.

In the story ‘Don’t Like It—Don’t Listen’ he begins with a description of Weema, with its salmon, cod, owls, polar bears, seagulls, eagles, and penguins. The sea has water as ‘clear as hundred-proof vodka’ and a river runs from the sea right through his little village.

Senya Malina quickly launches into his fantastical anecdotes and stories. He rounds up ducks and teaches them to add and multiply. A seagull with a raspberry-coloured beak delivers notes and care packages. He walks across the sea on a pair of super-long stilts. Perepilika, a 40-year-old woman, has an encounter with a bear. And in the 1890s, Senya Malina was on the first train to ever travel from Arkhangelsk. His magic tambourine made grain grow so that by noon the crop would be ready to harvest and he’d have bread for supper that evening.

In ‘Raspberry Streetlamps’ he was assigned the job of installing lamps and lampposts along Weema’s main street. He compacted snow by jumping as high as he could, which stopped the snow’s descent. The flakes compacted into columns, which became the lampposts. When the sun came out, the moment the sunbeams touched his lampposts ‘the posts lit up a fiery raspberry colour.’  

He had ‘one rutabaga that swelled to such a size it blocked the lane that runs along the downriver edge of our garden.’ The Great Rutabaga led to the neighbours launching a lawsuit for vegetable trespass. Fortunately the grand woman, Perepilika, came to the rescue. ‘She carved out a road through the rutabaga so wide that two wagons overloaded with hay were subsequently able to pass each other on it.’

I like the tales of his youth when he was a lumberjack. And the tale of him catching fish with his longjohns underwear (while he was completely naked). The story ‘French Snuff’ is wonderful – he tells that he fought against ‘Nappy Bonaparte’ (the French general), who gave him a beautiful gift of a snuff box – even though readers know that Malina wasn’t even born during Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign. This fact doesn’t stop Malina from fantasizing about his conquests.

My copy is autographed by Blackwell Boyce and has 20 colour plate illustrations. These drawings are magnificent and capture in detail the outlandish stories. Senya Malina is depicted as a short oldish man with ruddy cheeks and a red nose – just like he really was.

The reason there are a lot of references to raspberries is because Malina is Russian for raspberry!

The easy-to-read stories, loose translation to capture the essence of the comedic events, and humorous drawings all make this a funny, captivating read that will keep readers entertained from beginning to end.

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).