Sasha Sokolov

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Sasha Sokolov (born Александр Всеволодович Соколов/Alexander Vsevolodovitch Sokolov on November 6, 1943, in Ottawa, Canada) is a paradoxical writer of Russian literature.

He became known worldwide in the 1970s after his first novel "A School for Fools" had been published by Ardis (Ann Arbor, Michigan) in the US. Sokolov is one of the most important authors of 20th century Russian literature. He is well acclaimed for his unorthodox use of language, playing with rhythms, sounds and associations. The author himself coined the term "proeziia" for his work - in between prose and poetry.

Sokolov is a Canadian citizen and has lived the larger part of his life so far in the United States. During the second world war, his father worked as a military attaché at the Soviet embassy in Canada. After returning to the Soviet Union in 1946 and growing up there, Sokolov did not fit into the Soviet system. In 1965 he was discarded from a military university, probably because he had tried to flee the country. After that he studied journalism at the Moscow State University from 1966 to 1971. Shortly after his first daughter was born in 1974 his first marriage failed.

Then, he met the Austrian Johanna Steindl, who was teaching German at the University in Moscow at the time and should become his second wife. She smuggled the text of his first novel into the West. Only after the woman started a hunger strike in the Stephansdom in Vienna, Austria, in 1975, Sokolov was allowed to leave the Soviet Union. After his first novel had been published, Sokolov left Vienna in late 1976 for the United States. Early 1977, Johanna Steindl gave birth to Sokolov's son, who should become a journalist. Sasha Sokolov later married the US rower Marlene Royle.

His second novel, "Between Dog and Wolf", builds even more on the particularities of the Russian language and is deemed untranslatable. Thus, it has become a much lesser success than "A School for Fools", which has been translated into many languages. The complete manuscript of his fourth book is said to have been lost when the Greek house it had been written in burnt down. Sokolov, who leads a rather reclusive life, says that he keeps writing, but doesn't want to be published any more.

[edit] Major works

1976 Школа для дураков/A School for Fools. Ann Arbor. ("A School for Fools")
1980 Между собакой и волком/Between Dog and Wolf. Ann Arbor.
1985 Палисандрия/Astrophobia. Ann Arbor.

[edit] Literature

D. Barton Johnson: Sasha Sokolov: A Literary Biography, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 21, Nos 3-4, 1987, pp. 203-230

Cynthia Simmons: Their father's voice. Vassily Aksyonov, Venedikt Erofeev, Eduard Limonov, and Sasha Sokolov. Lang, New York u.a. 1993, ISBN 0-8204-2160-X