The Brilliance and Poverty of Russian Literature

Sergey Dovlatov is arguably the most popular Russian writer of the late 20th century, whose works (including “Zone,” “The Reserve,” “Our People,” “The Foreigner,” “The Suitcase,” and others) are beloved by several generations of readers. In the book “The Brilliance and Poverty of Russian Literature,” Sergey Dovlatov appears as a critic and publicist.
The first section collects his philological prose published in émigré newspapers and magazines. Dovlatov reflects on the fate and paths of development of Russian literature; he writes about the classics — Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Chekhov; about his contemporaries — Solzhenitsyn, Viktor Nekrasov, Akhsyonov, Voinovich, Brodsky; about the writers of the third wave of emigration and those who stayed. Dovlatov's judgments and assessments are sometimes precise, sometimes subjective, but invariably sharp and interesting: his articles and speeches highlight key problems and trends in the literary process of the 1960s–1980s, of which he was a part.