The life of Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov, spent in a creative search, was quite short. He died in 1990 at the age of 48. Sergey Dovlatov is one of the most widely read contemporary Russian writers in the whole world. His works are based on facts from his own biography, he conveys the attitude and lifestyle of the 60s, writes about the absurdity of Soviet reality and the life of emigrants in America.
Short biography of the writer
Dovlatov was born on September 3, 1941 in the city of Ufa, where his family was evacuated at the beginning of World War II. His mother was Armenian by ethnicity, and his father was Jewish, his parents belonged to the creative intelligentsia of pre-war Leningrad (his mother worked as an actress, his father was a director). In 1944, the family returned to the northern capital.
Throughout his life, Dovlatov tried to find a profession that could be his vocation. He spent most of his life in Leningrad. Here he studied at Leningrad State University at the Finnish department of the Faculty of Philology, but was expelled. Then the writer was called up for military service, which took place in the system of forced labor camps in the north of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and then near Leningrad. This world showed the writer another side of life, which he later portrayed in his novel The Zone.
After demobilization, Sergei entered the faculty of journalism. The young man combined his studies with work as a correspondent in a newspaper. During this period, he begins to write his first stories. Dovlatov entered the Leningrad group of writers "Citizens" and for some time worked as a personal secretary for the writer Vera Panova. He described his rich experience in his works "Compromise" and "Reserve" ("Pushkin Hills").
However, nothing came of his many attempts to publish his books in the Soviet Union. Opponents of the writer could not forgive his strong feelings towards everything that was absurd in life. His characters were strange in many ways, but they had personality. The writer did not look down at them; instead, it seems that he was watching them, avoiding any categorical conclusions. His works were full of humor, irony, love and compassion.
