Today, open source guides are easy to find on how to write a detective or adventure novel. At the beginning of the last century, such instructions did not yet exist. The writer Lev Ovalov was guided only by his natural abilities.
Komsomol youth
One of the Chinese sages did not advise his friends and family to live in an era of change. However, political cataclysms and changes overtake a person regardless of his desires. The famous Soviet writer Lev Sergeevich Ovalov was born on August 29, 1905 in a noble family. Parents at that time were visiting their estate, Uspenskoe, Oryol province. Father - a career officer, served in the cavalry. When the First World War began, the head of the family went to the front and died a year and a half later. To feed her three sons, the mother decided to move from Moscow to her native village.
When Lev was fourteen years old, he joined the Komsomol and began to actively work as an agitator and propagandist. Two years later, he was elected secretary of the district committee of the Komsomol. The Komsomol secretary not only spoke at meetings, worked on subbotniks, but also regularly sent reports on life in the village to the provincial newspaper. In 1923, Ovalov was sent to study at the Moscow Medical Institute. The country needed new, competent and energetic personnel. Lev entered the medical faculty and continued to engage in public affairs.
Professional activity
Lectures and seminars did not prevent Lev from managing the student library and studying in a literary studio. After a while, notes and essays signed by him began to appear on the pages of the periodicals Rabochaya Moskva and Krestyanskaya Gazeta. Classes in literary creativity bore fruit. Having received his medical education in 1928, Ovalov did not start working in his specialty. He was invited to the post of editor of the "Selkor" magazine. By this time, the writer had submitted his first novel "Chatter" to the printing house.
Ovalov's career as a journalist and writer was successful. In the pre-war years, Lev Sergeevich headed the editorial offices of the magazines Vokrug Sveta and Molodaya Gvardiya. He worked closely with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. The first story about the famous Major Pronin was published in 1939. The author continues to work intensively, and the next few stories are published as a separate brochure in the series "The Library of the Red Army." But everything changes dramatically after the start of the war. In July 1941, Ovalov was accused of divulging classified information and sentenced to a long prison term.
Recognition and privacy
The writer Lev Ovalov spent almost fifteen years in camps and exile. His first specialty saved him. He was serving time as a doctor in a camp hospital. Here I met my future wife, who was registered as a nurse. Husband and wife have lived under the same roof for almost fifty years.
After his release in 1956, Lev Sergeevich returned to Moscow and continued to write adventure books about the adventures of Major Pronin. The writer passed away in the spring of 1997.
