The exhibition of the Penza Literature Museum features a birth register extract issued to the future famous writer, Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov (1909–1992).
Nikolai Zadornov was born in Penza in the house that has been preserved to this day. His father was a veterinarian, and his mother was the daughter of a Penza priest. However, Nikolai Zadornov spent only the first year of his life in Penza, as his father, Pavel Ivanovich, was transferred to Chita and the whole family moved there. Nikolai spent his childhood in Siberia. He began performing on stage as a ninth grader and was accepted into the trade union of artists.
According to the writer’s memoirs, in 1934–1935, he lived in Ufa and worked as an editor for a theater’s wall newspaper. This marked the beginning of his literary career. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Zadornov headed the theater’s literary department and at the same time worked with a local newspaper and radio station, wrote newspaper stories, reports, and essays.
Nikolai Zadornov’s first serious literary work, the novel “Amur, the Father”, was published in 1940. It marked the appearance of a remarkable writer in Russian literature. He had a keen eye and was able to depict historical events, actions and inner world of people, their motivations, successes, and failures. Nikolai Zadornov went on to write two series of historical novels about the development of the Russian Far East in the 19th century and the heroic deeds of early explorers. He also wrote travel essays “In Sunny England” (1960) and “The Blue Hour” about the Far East (1968). Later, in the 1970s, he began a series of novels about early Russian-Japanese relations. Over the next decade, he produced several novels, “Tsunami, ” “Shimoda, ” “Heda, ” and “Hong Kong, ” which were later translated into Japanese. Towards the end of his literary career, the writer turned his attention to playwriting and started work on a comedy play, “The Last Attempt, ” which was never staged.
