Vassily Aksyonov occupies a distinctive place in the history of Russian literature after the rule of Joseph Stalin. Critics traditionally categorize Aksyonov among the shestidesiatniki--people in 1960...
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In the following essay, Brown examines a variety of Aksyonov's works and provides an overview of the author's career.
Kirpichenko, a roughneck tractor driver in the Soviet Far East, b...
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In the following review, Lingeman comments on Aksyonov's In Search of Melancholy Baby, noting that the book, an account of Aksyonov's life in America after his expulsion from the Soviet ...
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In the following review, Baranczak discusses Aksyonov's In Search of Melancholy Baby, pointing out that the account "illustrates two sides of the émigré's problem at...
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In the following review, Wood discusses several plays included in Aksyonov's collection Quest for an Island.
The cold war appears to have ended not in a thaw but in a world of thin ice. D&#x...
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In the following review, Hoffman faults Say Cheese! for its tendency to utilize jokes and satire only humorous to Russian readers, but asserts that the book provides an insightful look into Russia and...
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In the following review, Zinik, a novelist, points out the autobiographical aspects of Say Cheese! and faults the novel for its use of 1960s Russian jargon.
Vassily Aksyonov tells his story of Mosc...
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In the following review, Howe lauds the farcical aspects of Say Cheese! but faults the novel's attempts at seriousness in the latter half of the book.
There's a lot of pleasure to be ...
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In the following brief review, Aksyonov's novel Say Cheese! is lauded as a "well-made, surprisingly fluid" book.
Conformists are all alike; dissidents are all different—...
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In the review of Generations of Winter below, Parini, an educator, poet, and novelist, compares Aksyonov to Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, lauding Aksyonov's "deft historical sc...
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Hochschild is a nonfiction writer whose works include The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. In the review below, he asserts that the model for Aksyonov's Generations of Winter is Tolstoy...
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In the following essay, Meyer discusses several of Aksyonov's works and comments on the author's place in the "Young Prose" movement in Russian literature.
After Stalin&...
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In the following favorable review, Radley provides brief synopses of Generations of Winter, War and Prison, and Prison and Peace, which make up the three-volume set entitled Moscow Saga. Radley includ...
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In the following essay, Johnson discusses several of Aksyonov's novels and short stories and provides a comprehensive look at the author's career.
Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov was born on...
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In the following review, Gold lauds The Island of Crimea, praising Aksyonov's skill as a novelist.
I remember my relief as a young man to discover that the apparently monstrous mass of Green...
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In the following brief review, Aksyonov's use of satire in The Island of Crimea is compared to the satirical elements found in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
A classic jo...
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In the following review of The Island of Crimea, Peterson points out the variations in different translations of the novel and builds a case for the merits of Heim's translation.
The Island ...
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Skvorecký is a noted Czech-Canadian political novelist. In the following review, he praises The Burn and calls Aksyonov an "epochmaking writer."
Much of the effect of literary ...
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In the following review, Meyer discusses the influences that Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and Journey Into the Whirlwind, the prison camp memoirs of Aksyonov's mother, had on The Burn...
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In the following review, Eder discusses the shortcomings of Aksyonov's book In Search of Melancholy Baby.
Vassily Aksyonov, whose novel, The Burn, is one of the masterpieces of dissident Sov...
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Vassily (Pavlovich) Aksyonov
Critical Essay by Deming Brown
