Tolstaya, Tatyana

Related Category: Russian and Eastern European Literature: Biographies

(tōlstī´yä), 1951–, Russian short-story writer and essayist. Increasingly recognized as one of the major European writers of the postwar generation, Tolstaya is part of a Russian literary dynasty—Aleksey N. Tolstoy's granddaughter and Leo Tolstoy's great-grandniece. Reflecting the influences of Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, her work focuses with wit, intensity, and ironic compassion on the gap between her characters' dreams and the shattering reality of contemporary Russia. Her translated collections include On the Golden Porch (1990) and Sleepwalker in a Fog (1992), stories, and Pushkin's Children: Writings on Russia and Russians (2003), essays. Her satirical first novel, The Slynx (2000, tr. 2003), is an historical allegory set in a dystopian, mutant-inhabited post-nuclear-holocaust Russia.

See H. Goscilo, The Explosive World of Tatyana N. Tolstaya (1995).