SOURCE: Slonim, Marc. “Soviet Romantics.” In Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems, 1917-1977, pp. 122-29. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

In the following excerpt from his chapter on Soviet romantics, Slonim presents an overview of Olesha's works, emphasizing Envy and a few plays and short stories.

Perhaps the label of romantic does not do justice to the complexity of Yury Olesha, [a] representative of the Southern group, a novelist whose work and fate have a special place in Soviet literature. Born in 1899 into a middle-class family and brought up in Odessa, he served in the Red Army and then became a fellow-traveler and a journalist. His humoristic verse and sharp articles were published mainly in the Steam Whistle, the paper of the railroad workers' union. He suddenly came to the fore in 1927 when his Envy was hailed as a remarkable novel by both Soviet and émigré critics; Olesha's...