A review by lita_ak
Pushkin Hills. by Sergei Dovlatov, Katherine Dovlatov

4.0

Since Berlinale 2018 where I watched a film about Dovlatov, I have wanted to read some of his work. It turned out not to be so easy as his work has not been translated in Latvian. So I had to take the road less traveled and read something from a Russian author in English (my Russian is simply not good enough for literary adventures). Driven by a curiosity about an author that had eluded my literary radar, I was pleasantly surprised to find his writing as witty and engaging as the portrayal of his personality on screen. He writes about the realities of his time and the struggle of oppressed literary 'genius' that leads to nothing else but a broken home and alcoholism. Not an unfamiliar subject in Russian literature for sure, but he really managed to bring out the tortured soul of a Russian man. Coupled with a few extraordinary characters in the background, it was a delightful short read. But I have to give a fair warning that he uses a lot of references to many known and not so known people that you sometimes get stuck referring to the notes at the back of the book (until you just give up because those should have been footnotes...). The translation was surprisingly good!