Valery Tarsis

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Valery Tarsis (1906-1983) was a Russian novelist who was highly critical of the communist regime. His novel “Bluebottle” (1962) led to his committal to a psychiatric hospital. He was released following international condemnation.

His most famous novel, Ward 7 (1965), is an autobiographical account of life as a dissident in a mental hospital. In 1966 Tarsis was allowed to leave the Soviet Union; deprived of Soviet citizenship, he settled in Switzerland. There he wrote The Pleasure Factory (1967), a satire of life at a Black Sea resort. He died in Bern.