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Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin (born 7 August 1955 in
Bykovo, Moscow OblastBykovo is an urban locality in Ramensky District of Moscow Oblast, located southeast of Moscow. Population:...
) is a contemporary postmodern Russian
writerA writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and dramatist, one of the most popular in modern
Russian literatureRussian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
.
Biography
Sorokin was born on 7 August 1955 in
Bykovo, Moscow OblastBykovo is an urban locality in Ramensky District of Moscow Oblast, located southeast of Moscow. Population:...
near
MoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. In 1972 he made his literary debut with a publication in the newspaper
Za Kadry Neftyanikov . He studied at the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow and graduated in 1977 as an engineer.
After graduation he worked for one year for the magazine
Change , before he had to leave due to his refusal to become a member of the
KomsomolThe Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
.
Throughout the 1970s, Sorokin participated in a number of art exhibitions and designed and illustrated nearly 50 books. Sorokin’s development as a writer took place amidst painters and writers of the Moscow underground scene of the 1980s. In 1985, six of Sorokin’s stories appeared in the Paris magazine
A-YaA-YA , Cyrillic:«a-Я» — журнал неофициального русского искусства , was an underground Russian art revue...
. In the same year, French publisher
Syntaxe published his novel
Ochered (The Queue).
Sorokin's works, bright and striking examples of underground culture, were banned during the Soviet period. His first publication in the USSR appeared in November 1989, when the RigaRiga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
-based Latvian magazine Rodnik
(Spring) presented a group of Sorokin's stories. Soon after, his stories appeared in Russian literary miscellanies and magazines Tretya Modernizatsiya
(The Third Modernization), Mitin Zhurnal
(Mitya's Journal), Konets Veka
(End of the Century), and Vestnik Novoy Literatury
(Bulletin of the New Literature). In 1992, Russian publishing house Russlit
published Sbornik Rasskazov
(Collected Stories) – Sorokin’s first book to be nominated for a Russian Booker PrizeThe Russian Booker Prize is a Russian literary award modeled after the Booker Prize and inaugurated in 1992 by English Chief Executive Sir Michael Caine...
. In September 2001, Vladimir Sorokin received the People's Booker Prize; two months later, he was presented with the Award of Andrei Bely for outstanding contributions to Russian literature. In 2002, there was a protest against his book Blue Bacon Fat
, and he was investigated for pornography.
Sorokin's books have been translated into English, French, German, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Italian, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Korean, Romanian, Estonian, Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian, and are available through a number of prominent publishing houses, including Gallimard
, Fischer
, DuMont
, BV Berlin
, Haffman
, Mlinarec & Plavic
and Verlag der Autoren
.
One of his recent novels, A Day in the Life of an
OprichnikAn oprichnik was a member of an organization established by Tsar Ivan the Terrible to govern the division of Russia known as the Oprichnina ....
,
describes dystopian Russia in 2028, with a Tzar in the Kremlin, the Russian language with numerous Chinese expressions, and a "Great Russian Wall" separating the country from its neighbors.
Novels
Ochered (The Queue) [1983]. Paris: Syntaxe, 1985. (Translated into English, 1988. ISBN 978-0930523442.)
Norma (The Norm) [1979-1983]. Moscow: Tri Kita in cooperation with Obscuri Viri, 1994.
Roman (A Novel) [1985-1989]. Moscow: Tri Kita in cooperation with Obscuri Viri, 1994.
Tridtsataia liubov’ Mariny (Marina’s Thirtieth Love) [1982-1984]. Moscow: Izdanie R. Elinina, 1995.
Serdtsa chetyryokh (Four Stout Hearts) [1991]. Moscow: Literary Miscellany Konets Veka, 1994.
Pervy Subbotnik (The First Saturday Workday) [1979-1984]. In Collected Works in Two Volumes. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 1998.
Goluboe Salo (Blue SaloSalo is a traditional Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian food: cured slabs of fatback , with or without skin. As a trend, the Eastern European one is salted or brine fermented, hence the names slonina/slana/szalonna...
) [1999]. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 1999.
Pir (The Feast) [2000]. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2000.
Lyod (Ice) [2002]. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2002. (Translated into English by Jamey Gambrell, 2007. ISBN 1590171950.)
Put' Bro (Bro's way) [2004]. Moscow: Zakharov BooksZakharov Books is one of the main Russian independent publishing houses.Founded by the journalist Igor Zakharov in 1998 as a small independent publishing company, they gradually developed into an important publisher of popular and literary fiction...
, 2004.
23000 [2005] in Trilogy (Trilogiya). Moscow: Zakharov BooksZakharov Books is one of the main Russian independent publishing houses.Founded by the journalist Igor Zakharov in 1998 as a small independent publishing company, they gradually developed into an important publisher of popular and literary fiction...
, 2005.
Den' oprichnika (Oprichnik's Day) [2006]. Moscow: Zakharov BooksZakharov Books is one of the main Russian independent publishing houses.Founded by the journalist Igor Zakharov in 1998 as a small independent publishing company, they gradually developed into an important publisher of popular and literary fiction...
, 2006.
Zaplyv (Swimming in). Moscow: AST, 2008.
Saharniy Kreml (Kremlin Made Of Sugar) [2008]. Moscow: AST, 2008.
Plays
- Pelmeni (1984–1987)
- Zemlyanka (The Hut, or Earth-house 1985)
- Russkaya Babushka (Russian Grandmother) (1988)
- Doverie (Confidence) (1989)
- Dismorphomania (1990)
- Yubiley (Anniversary) (1993)
- Hochzeitreise (The Post-Nuptial Journey) (1994–1995)
- Shchi (Cabbage Soup) (1995–1996)
- Dostoevsky-Trip (1997)
- S Novym Godom (Happy New Year) (1998)
Film Scripts
- Bezumny Fritz (Mad Fritz), 1994. Directors: Tatiana Didenko and Alexander Shamaysky.
- Moskva (Moscow), 2001. Director: Alexander Zeldovich. First Prize on the festival in Bonn; Award of Federation of Russian Film-Clubs for best Russian movie of the year.
- Kopeyka (Kopeck), 2002. Director: Ivan Dykhovichny. Nomination for Award "Zolotoy Oven" for best film script.
- 4 (Four), 2004. Director: Ilya Khrzhanovsky
Ilya Andreevich Khrzhanovsky is a Russian film director. He is the son of Andrei Khrzhanovsky , one of the top Russian animation directors, and grandson of actor Yury Khrzhanovsky ....
. Grand Jury Prize of International Film Festival RotterdamThe International Film Festival Rotterdam is an annual film festival held in various cinemas in Rotterdam, Netherlands held at the end of January. It is approximately comparable in size to other major European festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Locarno...
.
- Veshch (Thing). Director: Ivan Dykhovichny.
- Cashfire. Director: Alexander Schurikhin.
- Mishen (Target), 2011. Director: Alexander Zeldovich.
Other works
- Photograph album V Glub' Rossii (In the Depths of Russia), in cooperation with painter Oleg Kulik.
- Libretto for opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Deti Rozentalya (Rosenthal's Children), with music by Leonid DesyatnikovLeonid Arkadievich Desyatnikov is a Russian composer.Leonid Desyatnikov was born in 1955 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He is a graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied composition and instrumentation. Desyatnikov has penned four operas, several cantatas and numerous vocal and instrumental...
; written on request of the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow.
- dozens of stories published in Russian and foreign periodicals.
External links
- Official Webpage.
- Full bibliography (in Russian).
- "Russia Is Slipping Back into an Authoritarian Empire", interview to Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
, February 2, 2007.
- "The Wait: On Vladimir Sorokin", The Nation, Elaine Blair, March 25, 2009
- "Ice by Vladimir Sorokin", Bookslut, February 2007
- "Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin", nthWORD Magazine Shorts, Ryan O'Connor, July 2011
.