Author | Sasha Sokolov |
---|---|
Original title | Школа для дураков |
Language | Russian |
Genre | Literary fiction |
Publisher | Ardis Publishing |
Publication date | 1976 |
Publication place | USSR |
Pages | 169 |
OCLC | 2182126 |
891.73/3 20 | |
LC Class | PG3488.O356 S5 1976 |
A School for Fools ( tr. Shkola dlia durakov ) is a novel by soviet author Sasha Sokolov. The first draft of the book was completed in 1973 [1] and distributed via samizdat. In 1975 a manuscript was submitted to Ardis Publishing and it was published in the United States in 1976. For the annotation, the publisher, Carl Proffer, used compliments on the work from Vladimir Nabokov's letter. In 1977 Ardis published the English-language translation by Carl Proffer.[ citation needed ]
In 2022 it was published by Carmel Publishing in Hebrew, translated by Tino (Konstantin) Moshkowitz . [2]
The novel doesn't have a linear plot, but rather presents events as recalled by the main character. The protagonist, student So-and-so (Russian : ученик Такой-то [a] ), is a student who suffers from dissociative identity disorder and nonlinear time perception, which he believes he inherited from his grandmother. So-and-so is in a constant discussion with his "other self" and has difficulty distinguishing between "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow."
The protagonist attends a school for special children, where he studies in a class taught by his favorite teacher, geographer Pavel Petrovich Norvegov whom the author also calls Saul Petrovich. He is also in love with another teacher, Veta. The accounts of their lives and the lives of some other minor characters highlight the reality of a repressive Soviet regime.
Following graduation, So-and-So goes on to work in a variety of jobs, from "sharpening pencils" to being a conductor. The narrative comes to an abrupt conclusion as the author runs out of paper.
in 1996, Wolfgang Kasack described the book as "the most surrealistic work of modern Russian literature." [3]
Mikhail Berg stressed the importance of the Christian worldview in the work and noted that the outstanding asset of the book is that its language and compositional peculiarities stem directly from the peculiarities of the protagonist. [4]
In the opinion of Mark Lipovetsky A School for Fools directly follows Nabokov's literary tradition and paves the way to the most important and interesting phenomena of the 21st century Russian prose, including works by Alexander Goldstein, Denis Osokin, Nikolay Kononov, and others. [5]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
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Sasha Sokolov is a writer of Russian literature.
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Ardis Publishing began in 1971, as the only publishing house outside of Russia dedicated to Russian literature in both English and Russian, Ardis was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan by husband and wife scholars Carl R. Proffer and Ellendea C. Proffer. The Proffers had two goals for Ardis: one was to publish in Russian the "lost library" of twentieth-century Russian literature which had been censored and removed from Soviet libraries ; the other was to bring translations of contemporary writers working in the Soviet Union to the West. Ardis has published around 400 titles, roughly half in English, half in Russian.
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Carl Ray Proffer was an American publisher, scholar, professor, and translator of Russian literature. He was the co-founder of Ardis Publishers, the largest publishing house devoted to Russian literature outside of the Soviet Union, and co-editor of Russian Literature Triquarterly (1971–1991).
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