Анатолий Иванов Anatoli Stepanovich Ivanov was born on May 5, 1928 in a simple peasant family. The homeland of the prose writer is the village of Shemonaikha (now it is the territory of Kazakhstan). Ivanov had to face difficulties from an early age: in 1936, the boy's father died. Three children remained in the mother's arms, 9-year-old Anatoly was the eldest. To help his mother, the boy worked a lot in the garden, and also fished in the rivers closest to the village. Difficulties hardened the character of little Anatoly: despite the difficult time, he finished his studies at school, and immediately after that he entered the university in Alma-Ata, choosing the faculty of journalism. Then, as a student, the young man began to write the first essays and articles, which were eagerly published in local newspapers. After graduating from university, Anatoly Ivanov moved to the city of Semipalatinsk, where he got a job in a local newspaper. At first, the aspiring journalist was listed as a literary employee in the agriculture department, and then received the position of executive secretary in the editorial office of the publication. In parallel, Anatoly Stepanovich continued to improve in the epistolary genre. Many essays and stories written at that time remained unpublished, but thanks to them Ivanov formed his own style. The efforts of the prose writer were not in vain: already in 1954 his first serious work was published - the story "The Peasant Woman". The young writer was noticed by serious literary magazines, and soon the Soviet reader got acquainted with other works of Anatoly Ivanov.