Slavnikova, Olga Alexandrovna

Olga Slavnikova was born on October 23, 1957 in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg ) in a family of defense engineers. In her childhood, she showed outstanding ability in mathematics, won at the regional and republican competitions, but under the influence of a teacher of Russian language and literature, who was in charge of the artistic circle of students, in 1976 she entered the journalism department of the Ural State University . In 1981 she graduated from it. After that, she worked for some time in the publishing industry, in the editorial staff of the magazine “Ural” , and then herself began to write, in her own words, “because there was nothing more to do, and there was a free time left. Publications of the initial period of creativity in the magazine "Ural" and in the short-run collections of young authors, which Slavnikova herself, with a caustic mockery, calls "mass graves".

Since 2003, the writer and her husband live in Moscow , she has three children and two grandchildren.

Slavnikova officially holds the post of coordinator of the prose direction of the literary award “ Debut ”. In interviews she has repeatedly stressed that the main source of her financial well-being is not in the literary sphere ^[2] .

Slavnikova's debut novel, The First-Year Student, was accepted for publication in 1988 after significant revisions that affected more than half of the original version. Two years later, Slavnikova achieved the templination of the publishing house in which she was working at the time, her first author’s collection, but after the collapse of the USSR, the editorial board preferred to publish a series of French love stories , and the book of Slavnikova was never sent to print because of her "Low artistic". The writer survived a deep mental crisis and, having decided to interrupt literary activity, she started small wholesale trade in books, however, without much success ^[2] . Subsequently, many of Slavnikova’s associates in this business were bred by her as characters in the novel “One in the Mirror”.

Around 1995, Slavnikova returned to active creativity.

In 1997, Slavnikov publishes his first major novel, Dragonfly, enlarged to the size of a dog, which entered the short list of Russian Booker and made the entire Russian literary community speak of the writer as a worthy follower of the traditions of magical realism . In 1999, Slavnikova’s novel “One in the Mirror” won the “ New World ” magazine award. The writer herself considers this book her favorite and most undervalued of all. When it was created, Slavnikova modeled the life and thinking style of the brilliant mathematician, a specialist in the field of fractal geometry , based on her own experience in this science in her young years. However, in the future, for the actual authenticity of the images prescribed by her, according to Slavnikova, the responsibility lies mainly with her husband.

The third book of Slavnikova "The Immortal" ( 2001 ) subsequently caused a scandal associated with the accusations made by the writer against the creators of the German film Goodbye Lenin! ". Slavnikova argued that the film writers shamelessly used the plot of her book as the basis for the film ^[3] .

Slavnikova had already distinguished herself from the circle of the Yekaterinburg literary party, gained national fame and began to think about moving to Moscow . She implemented this idea around 2003 . Having settled in the capital, Slavnikova began work on a new, very large novel, the working name of which was “Period”. The publication of the novel was repeatedly announced by Novy Mir magazine and Vagrius publishing house, but the dates were constantly postponed at the insistence of Slavnikova. Fragments of the book were published in the journal version as independent stories (for example, “Corundum hard labor”, “Cooperative“ Dome ”). In the final edition, Slavnikova reinforced the anti-utopian and fantastic trends and gave the novel the name “ 2017 ”, which echoes the works of Orwell and Dorenko .

The novel was published in late 2005 . In December 2006, the novel was awarded the “ Russian Booker ” award both by the version of professional writers and by the results of student voting, which is a precedent in the history of awarding this award. In 2010, an English translation of the novel appeared, benevolently received by critics.

In 2007, the collection “Waltz with a Monster” was compiled, consisting of Slavnikova’s early and late works, including the aforementioned novel “One in the Mirror” and short stories.

In 2008, Slavnikov was commissioned by the magazine Sacvoyage. Sleeping car ”, which is distributed in limited editions on long-distance trains, wrote several stories on railway topics, later processed into the collection“ Love in the seventh car ”. He received an ambiguous press, some critics ( Lev Danilkin ) argued that this is the worst work of the writer in many years.

The history of the publication of the "light head"

The next two years, the writer has devoted work on a new novel. The original title of the book was Flora, and scant information about this version of the novel allows it to be attributed to the chronooper genre ^[4] . This version did not satisfy the author, and Slavnikov, in her own words ^[5] , first tried to translate "the two most important Moscow myths - the myth of the mayor and the myth of the underground" on the example of the fate of a representative of the modern "office plankton", but then abandoned this idea in favor of the “novel about the new free man, putting the main value of the world - himself”. The journal version ^{[6] [7] of} this work has recently been published. It is interesting that from the electronic version of the issue of the journal, which contained the first book of the novel, for unknown reasons, the traditional note “ending follows” disappeared. In this regard, some literary critics ^{[8] [9] were} quick to come up with devastating reviews on “Light Head”, imputing Slavnikova to the blame for the looseness of the plot construction and the brokenness of the line of the main character in the supposedly “open” finale. The writer answered these attacks, declaring the laconic dryness of the first part as a stylistic device and advising for more adequate conclusions just to read the book to the end. In addition, she rejected the suspicions of reviewers that the new novel was allegedly sharpened by the publication in the West and international literary awards, stressing, however, that the popularity of her works in the United States and Europe leaves much to be desired ^[10] .

The style of my prose is really, let's say, individual: a colored, sparkling, hot mass of the living world rushes towards me in the ninth shaft, which must be tamed and turned into text. After, when the text is ready, the metaphors are thinned to the correct threshold of reading perception. In “Light Head,” the beginning is thinned out strongly to push the plot off. As for Sergey Belyakov, a nuisance came with him: he took the poloman, printed in the ninth issue of Banner, for the whole novel. But let's be honest: do all critics actually read what they are reviewing?

In defense of the new creation of Slavnikova, several other critics spoke out; for example, an employee of “Literary Russia” directly accused the authors of the “polroman” reviews of being jealous of the writer's popularity ^[11] . In response, Viktor Toporov called approving reviews of “Light Head” the product of the PR- service of Slavnikova and suggested that their true author is the husband of the writer Vitaly Puhanov ^[12] .

• 1988 - "Freshman".
• 1997 - “Dragonfly, enlarged to the size of a dog” - short list of “ Russian Booker ”.
• 1999 - “One in the Mirror” - New World magazine award.
• 2001 - “The Immortal” - Gorky Prize , 2012 .
• 2006 - “2017” - Russian Booker Prize.
• 2008 - “Love in the seventh car" - in the list of finalists for the Big Book award ^[13] .
• 2010 - “Light Head” ^[14] - a magazine version in the September and October issues of the Znamya magazine, later published in the book version by the publishing house AST.
• 2018 - “Long Jump” - in the list of finalists for the Big Book Award ^[15]

• Why are the books of Olga Slavnikova called authentic fiction? // " Komsomolskaya Pravda ". - / 2009. - June 16