Author and Hero in the Maze of Ideas

The name of Andrei Astvatsaturov, a literary scholar and professor at St. Petersburg State University, is well known not only in the professional philological community: he is the author of books and articles on Anglo-American literature, as well as the... novels "People in the Nude", "Skunks Camera", "Autumn in the Pockets", and "Do Not Feed or Touch the Pelicans". In his new book, Andrei Astvatsaturov addresses the works of 20th-century classics and contemporary Russian writers.
The combination of serious subject matter and captivating presentation style, which makes Astvatsaturov known as an outstanding lecturer, is also present in his literary studies. His virtuoso analysis allows one to see paradoxes in seemingly canonical works of Anglo-American modernists such as Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Jerome David Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Updike. Contemporary Russian authors unexpectedly turn out to be their heirs: in the criminal story by Roman Senchin, the plot of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" emerges, while the chronicler of the Russian diaspora, Andrei Ivanov, appears as the Russian Henry Miller. The book is addressed to a wide audience - both philologists and those who would like to better understand world classics, get acquainted with the most prominent names of contemporary Russian literature, and feel the capricious logic of the literary process.