Sokolov, Sasha, 1943-

Sasha Sokolov was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1943 and the family returned to Moscow after the war ended. In 1966, the aspiring writer entered the Journalism School of Moscow State University and soon began to publish stories and articles. After writing A School for Fools, he emigrated to Vienna in 1975 after learning that the novel had been accepted by Ardis Publishers in Michigan. He then established his right to Canadian citizenship and emigrated to the U.S. where he continued work on more novels. He divides his time between Canada and the U.S. All three of his novels have now been published in Russia and in 1996 he was awarded the prestigious Pushkin Prize.

From the description of Sasha Sokolov Collection, ca. 1975-1991. (University of California, Santa Barbara). WorldCat record id: 49802075

Biography

Aleksandr Vsevolodovich Sokolov, émigré novelist, poet, and essayist, was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1943. Both parents were, inter alia, intelligence agents at the war-time Soviet embassy there. Exposed after the war, they returned to Moscow where the father became a senior figure in military intelligence circles. Sasha spent a troubled youth. At one time his parents considered placing him in a special school for disturbed adolescents. Nonetheless, he succeeded in entering the Military Institute for Foreign Languages in 1962. Detesting military life, he and a friend attempted to cross the Turmen-Iranian border while AWOL. The authorities apparently failed to realize that he was defecting and merely sentenced him for being absent without leave. Feigning madness to gain a discharge, he spent three months in a mental hospital. Discharged from the hospital and the army in early 1965, Sokolov became a fringe member of Moscow's flourishing literary bohemia, particularly the avant-garde group SMOG (the acronymic Society of Youngest Geniuses). In 1966 the aspiring writer entered the Journalism School of Moscow State University and soon began to publish stories and articles. He also married a fellow student, Taisiia Suvorova. Bored with school, he took a job with a newspaper in the remote middle Volga area. Returning to Moscow in 1969 he worked for Literaturnaia Rossiia, the prestigious paper of the Russian branch of the Writer's Union.

Meanwhile his stories were attracting attention and he decided to settle in a remote area and write. Sokolov soon found a sinecure as a game warden on a hunting preserve. He spent most of 1972-73 there among the rough hunting and fishing folk who populated the area. It was here that he completed his first novel, the experimental School for Fools in which a schizophrenic adolescent depicts his world. Knowing the novel could not be published in the Soviet Union, he arranged for it to be smuggled out by an Austrian girl. Sokolov wished to emigrate and marriage to a foreign national was one of the few ways to make this possible. This plan met with numerous official obstacles until the lovers staged simultaneous hunger strikes in the town squares of Moscow and Vienna, eventually attracting world press coverage. Sokolov's desire to emigrate had become even stronger since he had learned that A School for Fools had been accepted by Ardis Publishers, a small press founded by Carl and Ellendea Proffer in Ann Arbor Michigan for the promotion of Russian literature.

Sokolov arrived in Vienna in October 1975. The marriage was short-lived and Sokolov, who was soon to establish his right to Canadian citizenship, emigrated to the U.S., partially to promote his novella which appeared first in Russian and then English (1977) to impressive reviews. He continued work on a new book, Between Dog and Wolf (1980), a phantasmagoric murder mystery set in the deep provinces of the Volga.

Sokolov sees himself as a wanderer and has constantly moved from place to place about the U.S. and Canada although he has a marked fondness for northern Vermont and adjacent Canada, the region in which he completed his satiric third novel, Palisandriia (1985), known in English as Astrophobia (1989). Sokolov spent much of 1988 in Greece before returning to glasnost Russia where he was lionized during a year-long visit. Seeking a quiet atmosphere, the increasingly reclusive writer returned to Canada, spending time in Newfoundland, as well as Vermont.

All three of his novels have now been published in Russia, as well as an essay collection entitled Vozhidanii Nobelia ili obshchaya tetrad' [ Waiting for the Nobel, or a Common Notebook (1993)]. Critical study of his work, once limited to the West, now flourishes in the writer's homeland. In 1996, Sokolov was awarded the prestigious Pushkin Prize for his contributions to literature.

Biography by D. Barton Johnson, October 29, 1997

From the guide to the Sasha Sokolov Collection, ca. 1975-1991, (University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Dept. of Special Collections)