“A conformist or an unbroken genius?”: writer Alexander Melikhov will tell who Mikhail Zoshchenko really was

In the St. Petersburg art space mArs (Marsovo Pole, 3) on Monday, January 24, there will be a meeting with the writer Alexander Melikhov “Mikhail Zoshchenko through the eyes of an accuser and a defender.” The event will start at 19:00 as part of the “Kvartirnik” project.

A new book by Melikhov about the Soviet writer, playwright Mikhail Zoshchenko, The Sapphire Albatross, is being prepared for publication in the Novy Mir magazine. At the meeting, the guests will learn what an ambiguous person Zoshchenko was and will be able to look at him through the eyes of a prosecutor and a defense lawyer.

“Everyone knows Zoshchenko as a man who wrote the cruel truth about the authorities in the Soviet Union and how he suffered for it, ending his life in persecution. I wanted to write about his life’s exploits, but when I began to study his biography, I discovered that he, like other conformists, sometimes wrote opportunistic monstrous things. The only thing that saved him was that they were not printed, ”said Alexander Melikhov.

That is why in his book the writer decided to move away from the idyllic image of an unbroken genius, and talk about the struggle of two principles in a person.

“An albatross in a chicken coop is, in my opinion, a vivid image of Soviet literature. Writers at all times faced a challenge: to please the dominant force or serve their destiny, to adapt to modernity or to give themselves to the eternal cause, ”summed up Melikhov.

Alexander Melikhov is a writer, philosopher, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, deputy editor-in-chief of the Neva magazine, winner of numerous literary awards and competitions. His works are published in the magazines Neva, Zvezda, Novy Mir, Oktyabr, Znamya, Friendship of Peoples, 22, Nota Bene (Israel), Foreign Notes (Germany) and many others.

Melikhov is the author of the books “Provincial”, “Scales for Good”, “Confessions of a Jew”, “Humpbacked Atlanteans, or New Don Quixote”, “Romance with Prostatitis”, “The whole world is a foreign land for us”, “Plague”, “Red Zion” , “Love Killer”, “Wise Men and Poets”, “International of Fools”, “Birobidzhan – Promised Land”, “Shadow of the Father”, “Republic of Korea: In Search of a Fairy Tale”, “Drifting Idols”, “Armor from the Cloud”, published by the publishing houses “Soviet Writer”, “New Helikon”, “Limbus Press”, “Vagrius”, “Retro”, “Time”, “Prose”, “Text”, “AST”, “Journal” Neva “”.

The ticket price is 300 rubles. You can get into the art space from the side of the Champ de Mars, the landmark is a sign with the name “mArs”.