Russian Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Russian language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Here's the text from my book:
-У вас есть стихи Лермонтова? -Нет, к сожалению, стихи Лермонтова проданы. -Но ведь они были несколько дней тому назад! -Да, но всё уже продано.
I don't understand the usage of "тому" here. What is its effect on this sentence, and what's the difference between this sentence and simply saying "Но ведь они были несколько дней назад!"?
Тому́ наза́д is a set expression meaning "ago":
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/тому_назад
Назад is a shorter and more modern way of the saying the same.
Note that the time span is in the Accusative:
which in most cases coincides with the Nominative:
