Literary dispute ends in murder in the Urals

A former school teacher in Sverdlovsk Region has murdered his drinking buddy after the two rowed over the significance of various literary genres.

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The police say that on the night of January 20 the suspect was drinking heavily with a 67-year-old friend in the latter's apartment in the town of Irbit. The two began to argue over which of the two literary genres, poetry or prose, is the more important.

The owner of the flat insisted that only prose represents true literature. His guest, a pedagogue by education and a former school teacher, averred that poetry was the greater of the two genres.

“After a short while the literary dispute degenerated into a violent row. The 53-year old devotee of poetry killed his opponent with a knife and fled the scene," the police report reads.

The suspect was soon apprehended and taken into custody; he was hiding at a friend’s home in the village of Malakhovo, Irbit District. He is now facing up to 15 years in jail.

First published in Russin in RIA Novosti.

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