Lure, Natan

(literary name, Note Lur’e). Born Jan. 2 (15), 1906, in the village of Roskoshnoe, Zaporozh’e. Soviet Jewish writer.

As a boy, Lur’e was an agricultural worker. He graduated from the literature department of the Second Moscow State University and served in the Great Patriotic War (1941-45). He worked for the newspaper Der ernes (The Truth) and began publishing in 1929. The novel The Steppe Calls (1932; Russian translation, 1958) describes life in a Jewish village, the sharp class struggle during collectivization, the breakdown of the psychology of private ownership, and the longing of the peasantry for a new life. In the novel Heaven and Earth (1963) the author focuses on the events of the Great Patriotic War. Lur’e’s prose is psychological and lyrical. He was a master of the technique of the internal monologue.