Viktor Erofeev: short biography

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Viktor Erofeev is a contemporary Russian writer. He is also known as a TV presenter. Occasionally performs on the radio.

Biography

Viktor Vladimirovich was born in September 1947 in Moscow. His family was close to power, since his father (Vladimir Ivanovich) had the highest diplomatic rank, and in addition, he was Stalin's personal translator.

Mother, Galina Nikolaevna, together with her husband graduated from the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages and worked as a translator.

From 1955 to 1959 he lived with his parents in France, since his father was an adviser to the USSR Embassy there.

After graduating from school, he entered the Moscow State University, the Faculty of Philology (Romano-Germanic department). In 1970 he successfully graduated from it. Three years later, he went to graduate school, choosing the Institute of World Literature for this. In 1975, he already defended his Ph. D. thesis, which was later published in the USA as the book Dostoevsky and French Existentialism.

Career

Victor Erofeev started publishing in 1967. These were articles in periodicals. He gained fame in 1973 after the publication of an essay on the creative activity of the Marquis de Sade in the journal Questionsliterature.

In the late 1970s, he organized the release of the literary almanac "Metropol". This is a samizdat magazine, because of which he was expelled from the Writers' Union. In addition, the diplomatic career of Vladimir Ivanovich suffered somewhat.

This incident affected the literary career of the writer, since Viktor Erofeev stopped publishing in his homeland (the ban was lifted in 1988).

In 1989, his first book was published in the Soviet Union under the title "Anna's Body, or the End of the Russian Avant-Garde". In fact, this is a story about a girl, either getting fat or losing weight dramatically, who identifies herself either with the poet Akhmatova or with Empress Anna Ioannovna.

Viktor Erofeev, whose stories are published in whole collections in different countries of the world, gained great fame thanks to his novel "Russian Beauty". This happened in 1990. The book immediately became super popular, it was translated into twenty languages of the world. The writer shows in the book the confrontation between two completely different universes - the world of a successful man and the world of a beautiful provincial woman. These people were not supposed to meet, but fate connected their lives, while not giving hope for happiness.

A film was made based on the book (screenwriters Viktor Erofeev and Cesare Ferrario), the roles were played by both Russian and Western actors (Italy).

Besides, in 1990 Yerofeev's controversial article "Commemoration of Soviet Literature" was published.

Viktor Erofeev, whose books, collections of short stories and essays are published in large numbersnot only in Russia, but also in Europe and America, spends a lot of time abroad, conducting lectures on literature.

The writer was a presenter on the TV channel "Culture" for some time. His program "Apocrypha" covered various issues of modern literature and its interaction with other areas of culture.

On the radio he was the host of the Encyclopedia of the Russian Soul program.

He is the chief editor of The Penguin Book of New Russian Writing.

Family

Viktor Erofeev has a younger brother Andrei (born in 1956). He is a well-known art critic, curator of art exhibitions.

Viktor Erofeev was married three times. The first wife was the Polish Wieslaw Skura. They married in the early 1970s. In 1976, a son, Oleg, was born to a Russian writer and Polish designer. Now he is a successful publisher, among other things, publishing his father's books.

Not officially divorced after twenty-nine years of marriage, Yerofeev began to live with a Ukrainian photographer, eighteen-year-old Evgenia Durer. In 2005, their daughter Maya was born. However, the birth of a child did not save their relationship. Evgenia decided to leave her common-law spouse in 2008.

Viktor Erofeev is a writer who has been officially married twice. The last wife was a fan of the writer Catherine, who is forty years younger than him. They have been married since 2010. The wedding was celebrated in the popular restaurant "The Garden", owned by A. Tsekalo and I. Urgant.

Interestingfacts

1. Alfred Schnittke wrote an opera based on Yerofeev's story "Life with an Idiot", which was first shown in Amsterdam in 1992.
2. In 1992 he received the Literary Prize. Nabokov.
3. Viktor Vladimirovich participated in the show "The Last Hero" in 2008. But I could not even get to the island, because for this it was necessary to jump off a comfortable yacht and swim to the shore. Together with him, Nikita Dzhigurda refused to do this.