The Zone (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Sergei Dovlatov
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social morality
- Time of Work: The early 1960’s
- Setting: A labor camp in Komi, in the northern Soviet Union
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, Prisons, Crime or criminals, Police, 1980’s, Ethics, Labor, Biography, Soviet Union or Soviets, Labor camps
- Locales: Soviet Union
Characters Discussed
Sergei Dovlatov (sehr-GAY dov- LAH-tov), the author not only of The Zone but also of a series of letters to its Russian émigré publisher, Igor Yefimov, reprinted at intervals throughout the novel. The letters act in part as a frame story but chiefly as a vehicle for direct comment by the author on the Soviet labor camp “archipelago” in which he served as an army guard from 1963 through 1965. His most important conclusion is that there is no fundamental difference between guards and prisoners (zeks).
Boris Alikhanov (ah-lih-KHA-...
[The entire page is 695 words long]
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