"Заповедник" has some hilarious passages and lines -- one about a bullet sticks in my mind as particularly funny -- and I loved the observations about the Pushkin preserve/park. I was less enthusiastic about the portions of the book that looked more at the narrator's relationship with his wife. They certainly weren't bad, but they weren't as absurdly laugh-out-loud funny as the daily life and work of a Pushkin park employee. ( )

Another Russian writer that I've just discovered. He was severely censured during Soviet time, so at first he was published in the West, but after his death at the still young age of 48 (in New York where he had emigrated), his works became known in his homeland as well, and not just in "underground" publications as before.

This book is quite autobiographical. Dovlatov's writing talent really shines in it. I found his style bitterly sardonic and poignant, his eye for description of things around him super sharp, while he is also brutally honest about himself and his "failings". Though it was normal history in Soviet Russia to not let any real and dissenting talent break through the rock solid censure, it still feels sad to see such writer being obscure for so long. His deep frustration at being unable to earn his living at what he does best pours out with angst in this book. And then to have a very short life of freedom in New York - he died in 1990, just about the time socialism died in Soviet Russia too - a time when he could have gone back to Russia to be recognized for who he was, a fine writer...

I read this book in the original Russian, but it has been been translated into English - and that's where I see a huge challenge for the translator: I cannot fathom how to translate some of the dialogues in it, so peculiar to the Russian language alone: Dovlatov picked up so skillfully on the colorful, hardly translatable, expressions of the local population of the village near Pushkin Hills. ( )

“Pushkin Hills” has a simple plot that really doesn’t go anywhere. Boris Alikhanov is an unpublished writer with an alcohol dependency, who is recently divorced from Tatyana and in need of money. To make matters worse, Tatyana is planning to emigrate to America with their daughter, Masha. Boris takes a job as a tour guide at the Pushkin Hills Preserve. Notwithstanding the thin plot, this autobiographical novella has much strength. Its tone is dark and ironic; it is filled with insightful observations on the Soviet culture, writing, censorship and emigration; there are humorous asides and crisp dialogue; and of course many delightful characterizations of the people Boris interacts with at the Preserve. ( )

In this novella, Boris Alikhanov, a recently divorced struggling writer (struggling mainly because his work couldn't be published in even the comparatively more open Khrushchev era, but also because of his fondness for drinking) takes a summer job at the Pushkin Hill Preserve, dedicated to the area where Pushkin lived and a destination for tour buses. One of the women who works there finds him lodging in a neighboring village in the completely dilapidated home of a man who stays drunk as much as possible, and he starts training as a tour guide. The reader learns from flashbacks in the form of Boris's reflections about Boris's writing, his meeting with the woman who became his wife and subsequent marriage, and the problems within the marriage that led to the divorce. Eventually, his ex-wife shows up at Pushkin Hills to inform him that she has made plans to emigrate to the west, along with their daughter; this sets Boris off on a downward spiral with a noted local alcoholic, but he manages to make it to Leningrad before they leave. One reason Boris doesn't want to emigrate with them is because he claims "In a foreign tongue we lose eighty percent of our personality. We lose our ability to joke, to be ironic. This alone terrifies me."

That's the plot. What makes this book special is Dovlatov's sparkling, albeit dark and often absurd, satire of Soviet culture - everything from the ersatz nature of the Pushkin Preserve (with objects from the era of Pushkin rather than ones Pushkin actually owned), the tour guides, the tour itself, the people who come on the tour buses, and the villagers to a KGB officer. And, oh, Dovlatov writes so delightfully, and tells such telling tales, capturing the essence of a character or a situation with a few well chosen words or phrases.

Some of this is semi-autobiographical. Dovlatov was also a writer, of course, and couldn't get his writing published in the Soviet Union, and he did work for a summer at the Pushkin Preserve. His father was Jewish, and this novel includes some exchanges that illustrate the instinctive nature of Russian antisemitism. And he did eventually emigrate to New York where he joined his wife and daughter, who has translated this novel (and provided helpful notes). I first found out about Dovlatov from a story in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, and I would be happy to read more of his translated works.

Really fun, quick-witted satire of a man who chooses a tourist outpost in Russia as a kind of boozy comic self-imposed exile and circle of Hell. Writer Boris has to deal with his difficult writing career and estranged marriage while giving lectures on Pushkin to barely-listening tourists and living with a colorful cast of eccentrics. I loved Dovlatov's economic writing and aphoristic descriptions. So many memorable lines! You have to read slow but it's a very satisfying and rewarding book from an author about whom I want to learn more. ( )