About the book: 1988 / Stories in essays by S. N. Torpigorev (Atava) (1841 - 1895), which made up the cycle “Disturbed Shadows”, belong to the outstanding achievements Russian democratic prose of the end of the last century. Originally a Tambov landowner, Terpigorev developed as a writer and journalist under the beneficial influence of the progressive ideas of the 60s, collaborated with Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin in Otechestvennye zapiski and other progressive publications. In his work, the writer widely used the impressions of childhood and youth, recreating the picture of the Russian provincial outback of the pre-reform era, drawing bright, socially clear and artistically expressive portraits of bar-serf owners and the peasants subject to them.