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These characters are caught in surreal situations which test their ability to retain their humanity. Makanin's world is one of deliberate ambiguity, where nothing, not even the story itself, is as it seems, and haunting imagery is used to appeal directly to a reader's subconscious. "Vladimir Makanin's name belongs at the top of any list of socialist, or now post-socialist, surrealists...The power of Mr. Makanin's fiction lies precisely in its ambiguity."--New York Times Book Review
Vladimir Makanin
VLADIMIR MAKANIN, born in the Russian Urals in 1937, came to prominence during the Khrushchev 'Thaw' but fell out of favor until Glasnost and Perestroika meant the end of heavy Soviet-era censorship. Baize-Covered Table with Decanter won the first post-Soviet Russian Booker Prize, and was published by Readers International as his first full-length book in English. In the 1990s Makanin achieved major recognition at home and abroad, including translation into French, German and Italian. He later won the Big Book Award for Asan, his novel exposing the corruption of the Chechen War and in 2012 won the European Prize for Literature. He died in 2017, and is revered as one of Russia's greatest modern writers.
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