Alexander Vampilov: An Irkutsk Story

The book tells about the life of Aleksandr Vampilov—the playwright whose plays “The Older Son” and “Duck Hunt” became signs of their time. Its authors, writer and journalist Vasily Avchenko (a finalist of the “Big Book” prize) and researcher Aleksey Korovashko, combine the precision of archival work with an engaging, lively style of storytelling.

Vasily Avchenko is a prose writer and journalist from Vladivostok, author of books “The Far East: The Hieroglyph of Space,” “Red Sky,” “Crystal in a Transparent Frame,” and others. Aleksey Korovashko is a prose writer and literary scholar who lives and works in Nizhny Novgorod; among his books are “Mikhail Bakhtin,” “Oleg Kuvayev” (with co-author V. Avchenko), and more.

At the center is the question of what should be considered success and failure—and what standards can be used to measure the fate of an artist. Despite the tragic early death and an inner feeling of incompleteness—he never got to see the true scope of his fame and the stage fate of “Duck Hunt” and “Chulimsk”—his life appears unquestionably successful. A stubborn Siberian and an ambitious provincial, he managed to build his own path, and to make the world hear him. The story of Vampilov is a story of victory—a kind of “American dream” in Soviet style: a boy without a father from the distant Siberian hinterlands becomes not just in demand, but the main playwright.