Voices of Russian Literature: Interviews with Ten Contemporary Writers

In 1859 Ivan Goncharov published Oblomov, the tale of a good‐hearted Russian aristocrat who spends most of his life lying on a sofa. In the course of a conversation here with Tatyana Tolstaya (born 1951) Sally Laird suggests that the characters in Tolstaya’s stories are spiritual descendants of Goncharov’s hero in their “ambivalence about life, about action, about taking responsibility for yourself and going out into the world”. Ms Laird senses something “especially Russian” in this attitude. Tolstaya begins her reply by saying “I think that ambivalence is universal”.

Ms Laird has also conversed with Fazil Iskander (born 1929),...