School for Fools

Sasha Sokolov — a living classic, avant-gardist, and tireless experimenter, one of the few contemporary authors praised by Nabokov. Sokolov sought to move away from the "mundane," "worn-out" language and thus invented his own, unique style, where prose flows into poetry and vice versa, and each word is impeccably chosen.
"School for Fools" — is Sasha Sokolov’s first novel, published in 1976 by Ardis. The entire text is an internal monologue, a stream of consciousness of a student at a special school. Perhaps his experiences are connected to Veta Akatova, whom the narrator is in love with, or maybe to the incredible nature he observes around him while living in a dacha settlement. But this is imprecise, as the world of this novel is shaky and fluid, and reality lacks clear contours. According to the author himself, this is a book "about a refined and strange boy, suffering from a split personality… who cannot reconcile himself with the surrounding reality" and, becoming acquainted with the adult world, discovers the presence of love and death within it.