"The greatest genius has come into the world. Looks like O.Wild",

- it is the boldest self-characteristic by Mikhail Zoshchenko

I am not a Communist, nor a Socialist-Revolutionary, nor a Monarchist, but merely a Russian

Mikhail Zoshchenko

A master of the word, a satirical writer, a philosophical writer, a screenwriter, a playwright and a translator... and, of course, a dandy and a pedant. A ladies' man, has accepted a stunning success to women inevitable.

Mikhail Zoshchenko, a nobleman by birth, supported the Soviet regime after the revolution. He used to ridicule cruelty, philistinism, vanity, ignorance and other human vices in his satirical works.

This day, on his birthday, we discuss a pressing issue: what to read?

"Dear Joseph Vissarionovich! Extreme circumstances only excuse me to contact you. I have written a book "Before the Sun Rises". This is an anti-fascist book. It is written for the triumph of reason and in favour of its rights..." – to Joseph Stalin M. Zoshchenko, 1943

M. Zoshchenko considered his autobiographical and psychoanalytic novel "Before the Sun Rises" as his life’s work. It was created from 1935 to 1943. Aa soon as the first chapters were published in the «Octyabr’» (October) magazine, 1943, the novel has been banned by censors, and the author harassed.

"Before the Sun Rises" is a part of the trilogy along with his "Youth Restored" and "The Sky Blue Book".

I went to Archangel. Then, on the frozen sea to Mezen. Then, I returned to Petrograd. I went to Novgorod, to Pskov. Then, to Smolensk province, to the town of Kransy. Once again I returned to Petrograd… In three years I changed towns twelve times and professions ten times. I was a policeman, a bookkeeper, a shoemaker, an instructor in poultry husbandry, a telephone operator for the border guard, a detective, the secretary of a court, a clerk-expediter. This wasn’t on account of hard times, this was on account of confusion.

M. Zoshchenko. Before the Sun Rises, translated by Sidney Monas

Married people were not accepted for admission to the University of Paris for six centuries, believed a married person is lost to science

M.Zoshchenko. Youth Restored

"Youth Restored" is an extremely unusual autobiographical novel in its form, the author used to confess. On the one hand, it is a work of fiction, with its plot and "emotional experiences", on the other hand, it belongs close to a scientific work.

Life runs out to fast to get settled into it so thoroughly, so earnestly

M.Zoshchenko. The Sky Blue Book

"I have not written a History of culture, but maybe just a brief history of human relations" – to Maxim Gorky M. Zoshchenko, 1934

"On Bait", "Monkey Tongue", "The Aristocrat", "Medical case", "Funny Story", "The Bathhouse" – are the most famous stories of Mikhail Mikhailovich, with colorful characters and ridiculous situations being described in simple, colloquial language, and with elements of satire and humor as a rule:

"I use the language the street speaks and thinks in right now"

One can hardly imagine this contradictory and complex era without his short stories and novels, plays and scripts, sketches and feuilletons, so hilarious, irreconcilably mocking, aching, heartwarming, and socio-philosophical they were.

For the first time a lively and unfeigned, vernacular speech of those years’ bazaars, train stations, trams and lines, communal flats and bathhouses entered the literature thanks to Zoshchenko

Search and order M. Zoshchenko books on the RUDN Digital Library website, — Your Academic Cat