Alexander Melentyevich Volkov
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- For other people named Alexander Volkov, see Alexander Volkov.
Alexander Melentyevich Volkov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Меле́ньтевич Во́лков) (July 14, 1891 in Ust-Kamenogorsk – July 3, 1977) was a Russian novelist and mathematician.
He wrote several historical novels, but is mostly remembered for a series of children's books based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The first of these books, The Wizard of the Emerald City, is a loose translation of the first Oz book, with names changed and chapters added or omitted. First published in 1939 in the Soviet Union, the book became quite popular and in the 1960s, Volkov began writing his own sequels to the story. He liberally borrowed from some of the originals such as using the "Powder of Life" idea from The Marvelous Land of Oz but mostly created a divergent universe. From 1963 to 1970 four more books in the series were published, with the sixth and final story published posthumously in 1982. Other authors such as Yuri Kuznitchov, Sergei Sukhinov, and Leonid Vladimirsky (Volkov's original illustrator) have more recently written additional sequels in Russian, creating in effect an alternative series of Oz books.
The context and situations found in the Volkov version are notably different from the original Baum version in their political tones. The situations, while still maintaining a childlike clarity of good versus evil, often involve the characters encountering very mature political and ethical decisions. The heroes are repeatedly called upon to defend Oz against invasions or topple feudalistic or aristocratic governments to free the populace. Both themes that are often found throughout Soviet sci-fi and adventure literature (see the Strugatsky brothers' novels Hard to be a God and Inhabited Island).
Volkov's Magic Land series, as it was called, was translated into many languages and was popular with children all over the Eastern bloc. Volkov's version of Oz seems to be better known than Baum's in some countries, for example in China, in Germany (formerly East Germany), and possibly in Arabic-speaking countries such as Syria. In Germany, one author has written his own set of sequels to Volkov's books. The first four books in the series have been translated into English — or retranslated, in the case of the first book — by Peter L. Blystone, and were published by Red Branch press in two volumes (two books a volume) in 1991 and 1993.
[edit] Volkov's Magic-Land books
- The Wizard of the Emerald City (1939, revised in 1959)
- Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers (1963)
- The Seven Underground Kings (1964)
- The Fiery God of the Marrans (1968)
- The Yellow Fog (1970)
- The Secret of the Abandoned Castle (1975, published in 1982)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Volkov, Alexander Melentyevich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 14, 1891 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 3, 1977 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
