The Way of Muri

Description

On his journey from his war-torn village, Muri the cat travels through Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, meeting on the way an unlikely - but helpful - group of creatures, from a sperm whale to a paraplegic mountaineer and a wandering Jew. This is no children's book, but a witty exploration of the human condition through the people and objects Muri meets on his travels. Somewhere in the mix, Boyashov introduces us to two eminent professors, one from Cambridge, one from Geneva, who take opposite views on the question: Is man in a perpetual and aimless state of wandering or must he always have a goal in mind? The book is intended to be read on two levels - as a narrated story of real (fictional) characters and as an allegory. It has been compared with 'Sophie's World'.

Ilya Boyashov was born in Leningrad in 1961. His first stories were published in literature magazines in the early 1980s, and his collection of short-stories entitled 'Play Your Melody' published in 1989, after which he was admitted to the Russian Writers' Union.