Swambrania

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Schwambranien ( Russian original title Кондуит и Швамбрания ) is the title of a novel by the Soviet children's author Lev Kassil .

The novel is set in 1917 at the time of the October Revolution in Russia . Two children from a family of doctors near Saratov invent the continent of Swambrania and its inhabitants as a vanishing point and counter-world to everyday school life in Tsarist Russia . Because of the cartographic outline of the island, Schwambranien is also known as the “continent of the great tooth”. The discovery of the country was originally triggered by the two brothers' cat, who rolled a valuable chess piece (the queen) of the children's father under a sofa. As a result, the children were placed under house arrest and invented a new continent out of boredom. They settle Swambrania next to Australia in the Pacific and populate it with figures that were also invented (the queen, who was later found again, is banished to the mussel grotto and henceforth guards the country's secret documents). You will experience some fantastic adventures there yourself, drawing inspiration from your everyday life in the small Russian town. The fantasy land even survived the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and continued to exist for a long time after the beginning of the Russian civil war . Later the maps and plans of Swambrania end up with the Cheka secret service .

Significant discoveries were made by the two brothers' research trips, including the discovery of the place where the earth becomes round. Important characters in the novel are Stjopka der Atlantide, so named because of his research zeal, and Arkascha Portjanko, both classmates of the brothers at the tsarist grammar school.

The novel was published by the Leipzig youth book publisher Ernst Wunderlich in a translation by Horst Scherenschmidt , and from 1960 by the children's book publisher Berlin.

literature

  • Lev Kassil: Schwambranien or the unheard of adventures of two brave knights. Translated from Russian by Horst Scherenschmidt. Children's book publisher, Berlin 1960, DNB 452331293 . (1987, ISBN 3-358-00234-9 )

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