Mikhail Zoshchenko

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Mikhail Zoshchenko
Saint Petersburg University
Notable works	Youth Restored (1933) Before Sunrise (1943)

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (Russian: Михаил Михайлович Зощенко; Ukrainian: Михайло Михайлович Зощенко;10 August [O.S. 29 July] 1894 – 22 July 1958) was a Soviet and Russian writer and satirist.

Biography

Zoshchenko was born in 1894, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, according to his 1953 autobiography. Other sources suggest that he was born in Poltava, in present-day Ukraine.^[2] His Ukrainian father was an artist and a mosaicist responsible for the exterior decoration of the Suvorov Museum in Saint Petersburg.^[3] His mother was Russian. The future writer attended the Faculty of Law at the Saint Petersburg University, but did not graduate due to financial problems. During World War I, Zoshchenko served in the army as a field officer, was wounded in action several times, and was heavily decorated.^[1] In 1919, during the Russian Civil War, he served for several months in the Red Army before being discharged for health reasons.

He was associated with the

of 1946, Zoshchenko lived in dire poverty. He was awarded his pension only a few months before he died.

Zoshchenko developed a simplified

.

In 1940 Zoshchenko published a series of short stories for children about Vladimir Lenin.^[5]

Criticism

A critical anthology Мих. Зощенко: pro et contra, антология was published in 2015. It included a 1926 article by

Selected bibliography (in English translation)

• A Man Is Not A Flea, trans. Serge Shishkoff, Ann Arbor, 1989.
• Before Sunrise. Trans. Gary Kern, Ann Arbor, 1974.
• Nervous People and Other Satires, ed. Hugh McLean, trans. Maria Gordon and Hugh McLean, London, 1963.
• Scenes from the Bathhouse, trans. Sidney Monas, Ann Arbor, 1962.
• Youth Restored. Trans. Joel Stern, Ann Arbor, 1984.
• The Galosh. Trans. Jeremy Hicks, New York, 1996.
• Sentimental Tales. Trans. Boris Dralyuk, New York, 2018.
• Pассказы о Ленине ("Stories about Lenin". In Russian. Moscow, 1974.)

References

Further reading

• Scatton, Linda Hart (1993). Mikhail Zoshchenko: Evolution of a Writer. Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 0-521-42093-8
  .

External links

• Creative Commons English translation of Zoshchenko's ultra-short story Nervous People
• Discovering Zoshchenko Alexander Melnikov,
  Russia Beyond the Headlines
  , 2 October 2009
• English translation of Zoshchenko's short story Honest Citizen
• Three short autobiographies by Zoshchenko
• Poverty | The Galosh by Zoshchenko at the Short Story Project
• Mikhail Zoshchenko. Stories.