Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS vii
3. PREFACE ix
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
5. A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION xvii
6. ONE. The Parameters of Village Prose 1
7. TWO. The Question of Genre 13
8. THREE. The Poetics of Village Prose 29
9. FOUR. Time, Backward! 48
10. FIVE. Borrowed Time: Metaphors for Loss in Village Prose 64
11. SIX. The Village Prose Writers and Their Critics 81
12. SEVEN. Two Detectives in Search of Village Prose 99
13. EIGHT. Rewriting and Rereading Literary History 113
14. Appendix I. “Kondyr” 129
15. Appendix II. “Kondyr”: A Parametric Analysis 140
16. NOTES 149
17. INDEX 189