Sasha Sokolov Books

By turns lyrical and philosophical, witty and baffling, A School for Fools confounds all expectations of the novel. Here we find not one reliable narrator but two “unreliable” narrators: the young man who is a student at the “school for fools” and his double. What begins as a reverie (with frequent interruptions) comes to seem a sort of fairy-tale quest not for gold or marriage but for self-knowledge. The currents of consciousness running through the novel are passionate and profound. Memories of childhood summers at the dacha are contemporaneous with the present, the dead are alive, and the beloved is present in the wind. Here is a tale either of madness or of the life of the imagination in conversation with reason, straining at the limits of language; in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, “an enchanting, tragic, and touching book.”

Sasha Sokolov is one of few writers to have been praised by Vladimir Nabokov, who called his first novel, A School for Fools, "an enchanting, tragic, and touching book." Sokolov's second novel, Between Dog and Wolf, written in 1980, has long intimidated translators because of its complex puns, rhymes, and neologisms. Language rather than plot motivates the story--the novel is often compared to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake--and time, characters, and death all prove unstable. The one constant is the Russian landscape, where the Volga is a more-crossable River Styx, especially when it freezes in winter. Sokolov's fiction has hugely influenced contemporary Russian writers. Now, thanks to Alexander Boguslawski's bold and superb translation, English readers can access what many consider to be his best work.

Exploring the realms of art, literature, and culture, this collection of essays by Sasha Sokolov delves into his profound insights and reflections as one of Russia's most significant contemporary novelists. Through thought-provoking discussions, Sokolov examines the intricacies of writing and the impact of culture on artistic expression, offering readers a deep understanding of his creative philosophy.

Roman Shkola dlja durakov - odno iz samyh znachitel'nyh javlenij russkoj literatury konca HH veka. Po opredeleniju samogo avtora, jeto kniga ob utonchennom i strannom mal'chike, stradajushhem razdvoeniem lichnosti ko toryj ne mozhet primirit'sja s okruzhajushhej dejstvitel'nost'ju i kotoryj, priobshhajas' k miru vzroslyh, otkryvaet prisutstvie v mire ljubvi i smerti. Po-prezhnemu ostajutsja aktual'nymi slova pervogo izdatelja romana Karla Proffera: Nichego podobnogo net ni v sovremennoj russkoj literature, ni v russkoj literature voobshhe

Vtoroj iz trekh romanov, pozhaluj, samogo izoschrennogo i zagadochnogo pisatelja nashego vremeni.

Lange Zeit hat Sokolows zweiter Roman durch seine komplexen Wortspiele, Reime und Neologismen viele Übersetzer eingeschüchtert. Denn nicht die Handlung treibt die Geschichte an, sondern die Sprache, so dass Zeit, Figuren und Tod sich als unbeständig erweisen. Die einzige Konstante ist die russische Landschaft, in der die Wolga ein überquerbarer Fluss ist, vor allem wenn sie im Winter zufriert. Der Roman enthält 37 Gedichteinschübe, die unter dem Titel Aufzeichnungen eines Jägers zusammengefasst sind und sich auf das gleichnamige Werk von Iwan Turgenjew beziehen.