Viktor Jerofejew [ Russland ]

Viktor Erofeev was born in Moscow in 1947. The son of a high-ranking diplomat he spent some years of his childhood in Paris. This meant he had access early on to literature banned in the Soviet Union. He was greatly influenced by the works of Vladimir Nabokov and the Marquis de Sade. In the late 1960’s he studied Literature in Moscow. He then worked for the Institute of World Literature. In 1975, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on »Dostoevsky and French Existentialism«. As a literary critic he wrote some essays interpreting the Marquis de Sade’s writing and an article on the philosophy of Leo Shestov. The literary almanac »Metropol« (Eng. »Metropol«, 1982) first created a major scandal in 1979. It was a compilation of politically explosive texts, selected by Viktor Erofeev, Vassili Axionow, Andrei Bitov, Jevgeni Popov and Fasil Iskander, in which both officially established writers and renegade writers were included. The attempt to publish the almanac in the Soviet Union failed because it was judged to be »pornography of the mind«. The work was published in the West. During this period his father, Vladimir Erofeev, Stalin's former interpreter, was forced to resign and end his diplomatic career. From this time Viktor Erofeev was considered a dissident, and his writings were banned. With the first signs of Glasnost and Perestroika, Viktor Erofeev was able to publish again. In 1990 his first novel appeared, »Russkaia Krasavitsa« (Eng. »Russian Beauty«, 1992). Through the story of the beautiful Irena, a high-class prostitute in Moscow, the reader is transported into the world of the dark, grotesque aesthetics of sex, violence and death. In two essays, »Pominki po sovyetskoi literatur« (1990; t: An epitaph of Soviet literature) and »Russkie tsvety zla« (1993; Eng. »Russia’s Fleurs du mal«, 1995) Erofeev announced the death of the literature of Socialist Realism. At the same time he set out a radical artistic manifesto for a new literature of evil. He was also the editor of the first Russian edition of Nabokov's work, together with other anthologies of Russian literature. His story »Zhizn s idiotom« (1991;Eng. »Life With an Idiot«, 1992) was adapted for the operatic stage by Alfred Schnittke. Erofeev writes regularly for »The New Yorker«, the »New York Review of Books«, as well as for »Die Zeit« and the »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung«. After his well-received autobiographical novel »Khoroshii Stalin« (2004; t: The good Stalin), he recently published a collection of stories »De Profundis« (2006) which was translated into German in the same year. Erofeev lives in Moscow.

© internationales literaturfestival berlin

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Leben mit einem Idioten
Fischer
Frankfurt/Main, 1991
[T: Beate Rausch, Rüdiger Wehling-Raspé]

Im Labyrinth der verfluchten Fragen
Fischer
Frankfurt/Main, 1993
[T: Beate Rausch]

Das jüngste Gericht
Berlin Verlag
Berlin, 1997
[T: Beate Rausch]

Fluß
Aufbau-Verlag
Berlin, 1998
[T: Beate Rausch]

Männer
Kiepenheuer und Witsch
Köln, 2000
[T: Beate Rausch]

Der gute Stalin
Berlin Verlag
Berlin, 2004
[T: Beate Rausch]

Die Moskauer Schönheit
Berlin Verlag
Berlin, 2006
[T: Beate Rausch]

De profundis
Berlin Verlag
Berlin, 2006
[T: Beate Rausch]