Fazil iskander biography books

In cases where Russian texts are cited, the Russian is given first with the English in parentheses after.

A number of these authors have been published in English in Moscow, by Progress Publishers.

The Russian literary scene is bizarre. The funniest new satirical work by a Soviet writer is Vladimir Voinovich’s story of his own real-life battle to get into a two-room apartment which is coveted by another “writer” (only publication: Taiwan Belongs to China) who wants the extra square meters for a toilet (an American toilet at that) which he purchased while at the UN.

The finest novel in the last twenty years (Sokolov’s A School for Fools) is by a Russian born in Ottawa who left Moscow this fall to become a gardener and lumberjack in the Vienna Woods. Solzhenitsyn has written a book about Lenin that his friends say is too autobiographical.

The best-selling Soviet poet is a blind man who writes like Rod McKuen.