Victor Erofeyev
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Victor Erofeyev (Russian: Виктор Ерофеев; born 1947) is a Russian author, the son of a high-ranking Soviet diplomat (who worked closely with Stalin). He spent some of his childhood in Paris, which accounts for why much of his work has been translated from Russian into French, while comparatively little has reached English.
Erofeyev graduated from Moscow State University in 1970, where he studied Literature and Languages. He then made his post-graduation at the Institute for World Literature in Moscow where he completed his post-graduate work in 1973 and received his kandidat degree in 1975 for his thesis on Dostoyevsky and French existentialism. Consequently Erofeyev's work often contains pastiches of Dostoyevsky's work and themes.
He became a literary critic, publishing works on Shestov and the Marquis de Sade. He later organised his own literary magazine, Metropol, in which many of the big names of Soviet Literature participated like Aksenov, Bitov,Akhmadulina,Okudzhava and others. The magazine was put into circulation via so called «Samizdat», ie, avoiding Soviet censorship. As a result, Erofeyev was expelled from the «Union of Soviet Writers« and got banned from being published until 1988, when Gorbachev came to power.
Victor Erofeyev currently resides in Moscow and frequently appears on Russian television where he has his own programm on the Russian TV channel «Kultura» ( culture), he also has a programm on the Radio Liberty, Moscow. Alfred Schnittke's Life with an Idiot opera is based on his story with the same name which he made into a libretto for the composer.
[edit] Major works
- Russian Beauty
- The Good Stalin
- The Last Judgement
- Five Rivers of Life
- Encyclopaedia of the Russian Soul
- Men and God X
- Life with an Idiot (a collection of short stories)
- In the Labyrinth of Accursed Questions (a collection of essays)
Erofeyev also regularly contributes to The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The International Herald Tribune.
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[edit] Bibliography
Andrew Reynolds's essay entitled East is East...? Victor Erofeyev and the Poetics/Politics of Idiocy. Reynolds is the translator of Life with an Idiot, first published by Penguin in English in 2004. ISBN 0-14-023621-X.
