Sergei Dovlatov’s The Compromise and The Zone won him acclaim throughout the American literary establishment. His writings in The New Yorker and other prominent periodicals have made him one of the most widely read of Russian émigré authors. In Ours, he traces four generations of Russian family life – and the very course of modern Soviet history – through a portrait of the Dovlatov clan: from Uncle Aron, whose political convictions wavered with his own unstable health; to upstanding Cousin Boris, the family’s pride, who found he was happy only when in trouble with the authorities; to larger-than-life Grandpa Isaak; to the wildly comic story of how Dovlatov met his wife; to off-the-wall tales of parents and cousins, uncles and children, and even the p et dog who completes the family circle.
Sergei Dovlatov’s The Compromise and The Zone won him acclaim throughout the American literary establishment. His writings in The New Yorker and other prominent periodicals have made him one of the most widely read of Russian émigré authors. In Ours, he traces four generations of Russian family life – and the very course of modern Soviet history – through a portrait of the Dovlatov clan: from Uncle Aron, whose political convictions wavered with his own unstable health; to upstanding Cousin Boris, the family’s pride, who found he was happy only when in trouble with the authorities; to larger-than-life Grandpa Isaak; to the wildly comic story of how Dovlatov met his wife; to off-the-wall tales of parents and cousins, uncles and children, and even the p et dog who completes the family circle.