SOURCE: “Vladimir Voinovich, Georgy Vladimov,” in Beyond Socialist Realism: Soviet Fiction since Ivan Denisovich, Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980, pp. 136–61.

In the following essay, Hosking focuses on the character development of the heroes and narrators in Voinovich's fiction, comparing his comic vision of Soviet society to the tragic vision of contemporary writer Georgy Vladimov.

[Voinovich was b]orn 1932 in Stalinabad (now Dushanbe) in Tadzhikistan: his mother was a schoolteacher, his father a journalist. He trained as a carpenter. Served in the army, 1951-5, and published some verse, but was not accepted when he applied to the Gor'kii Institute of World Literature in 1956 and 1957. He worked as a carpenter, then taught evening classes in the Virgin Lands region of Kazakhstan. In 1960 he found a job with Moscow Radio, where he composed a cosmonauts' song that won him wide popularity. At about the same time his first story was accepted for publication...