Sasha Sokolov: 3 books

Arguably the most important living Russian writer, Sasha Sokolov is an acknowledged literary master. Widely admired for his ability to elevate prose to the level of poetry, he is also known for his craftsmanship and phenomenal use of language. Until now, however, English-speaking audiences have only...

Sasha Sokolov is one of few writers to have been praised by Vladimir Nabokov, who called his first novel, A School for Fools, "an enchanting, tragic, and touching book." Sokolov's second novel, Between Dog and Wolf, written in 1980, has long intimidated translators because of its complex...

By turns lyrical and philosophical, witty and baffling, A School for Fools confounds all expectations of the novel. Here we find not one reliable narrator but two “unreliable” narrators: the young man who is a student at the “school for fools” and his double. What begins as a reverie (with...