I want to express my admiration for a lesser-known Russian emigré writer Sergei Dovlatov (1941-1990) - his stories made this year brighter for me.

I want to express my admiration to a lesser-known Russian emigré writer Sergei Dovlatov (1941-1990) - his stories made this year brighter for me.

The body of Dovlatov's literary work consists of short stories and novellas set in the 1970s Soviet Union, during the so-called Era of Stagnation, a time characterized by a kind of apathetic stability. The romanticism of 1960s generation was gone; the influence of Western pop culture met the half-hearted censorship attempts of the officialdom. The bureaucracy was inefficient and often corrupt, and the general disposition of population manifested itself through the record rates of alcohol consumption.

In such circumstances, Sergei Dovlatov was not necessarily a critic, but an ironist. A sort of tragic, sardonic irony is the underlying motif of his literary work. Using his rich experience as prison guard, journalist, failed writer and successful alcoholic, Dovlatov sketches out stories which are at the same time veridic and slightly absurd. The first-person narrator - Dovlatov's alter ego - humorously tells the little misadventures that happen in an apparently rigid and politically upright society. However, he is not a rebel or a dissenter, but a fatalistic, weary middle-agen man who tries to catch a breath of fresh air in the midst of pedantry, formalism and monotony.

Yet with how much energy of life these stories are imbued! This vitality is the source of numerous witty remarks, sharp phrases and anecdotes. The main character is always detached and the life is never taken too seriously. I would have readily described Sergei Dovlatov's genre as comedy, hadn't it been for a sour aftertaste that persists after perusal - most eminently, for me, in his brilliant novella 'Pushkin Hills' (1983). To summarize my impressions, Dovlatov's stories are bittersweet and the main characteristic of his setting is absurdity.

Besides the Brezhnev-era USSR, Dovlatov describes the fate of Soviet emigrés in the United States - a path taken by the author himself in 1979. The life on the other side of the Atlantic had its own hardships, as the recently arrived immigrants felt as strangers in their land of adoption, and their adaptation process was not as smooth as they might have thought.

After all, Dovlatov's satire might be universal - it can be applied to Socialist countries, Capitalist America or even modern-day Russia. Something in his writings transcends the boundaries of place and time. That is the reason why it is widely popular among Russian-language readers thirty years after the USSR's collapse. Personally, I have discovered Dovlatov this year and raptly read whatever of his short books I could find, and will no doubt continue in the following year

As to the foreign readers, there seems to be a solid obstacle to Dovlatov's popularity in the West - he is difficult to translate and I bet the text would lose a lot of its original nuances in the process. Also, his humor is often hard to understand without knowing the context. Nevertheless, I found recent editions of him in English and even in Romanian, so I am glad he is at least partially recepted beyond the post-Soviet countries.