Alexei Salnikov

Born: 1978

Quick Study: Alexei Salnikov quickly became a beloved name among Russian readers thanks to darkly humorous fiction that takes place along the borders of relentlessly realistic, ordinary, everyday Urals lives and eerie, unknowable layers of that same reality.

The Salnikov File: Salnikov, who writes poetry and prose, published his first poetry collections with regional Urals presses in the early 2000s. His most recent collection, Cat, Horse, Tram, Bear, was published by Livebook (Moscow) in 2019. Livebook also published his first novel, The Department, in 2017: The Department details the mysterious work of an odd lot of government employees at a strange department. They are tasked with interrogating and killing citizens but have no idea why. The Department is Salnikov’s second novel published in full, following The Petrovs in and Around the Flu, which won the National Bestseller Award in 2018, received the NOSE Award’s critics’ prize in 2019, фтв hit the Big Book Award shortlist. The Petrovs drew in readers with another Urals setting plus hallucinatory flu symptoms and a seemingly ordinary family that might have a very dangerous side. Indirectly, a 2019 Big Book finalist that’s also set in the Urals, depicts a society where poetry is banned as if it were a narcotic.

Psssst….........: The Petrovs has been adapted for stage and a screen version is on the way, in 2021, from director Kirill Serebrennikov...

Salnikov’s Places: Born in Tartu, Estonia… The Urals: Salnikov lives in Yekaterinburg and has lived in Nizhny Tagil…

The Word on Salnikov: In a review on Colta.ru, critic Nikolai Alexandrov writes of The Petrovs: “So what is this novel really about? It’s about the strange twisted reality that, as critics wrote a couple centuries ago, stifles and oppresses, that doesn’t let anything go or escape. It’s about the ‘creatures around us,’ as Petrov says, this world’s original inhabitants, who don’t much resemble people… Well, it’s also about the beast hiding within a person.”

Salnikov on Salnikov & Writing: In an interview with Elena Safronova for the site Revizor, Salnikov gives this answer when asked about advice for potential young and aspiring authors, “Oh, if there were knowhow like that, I’d have used it! But there isn’t. You have to sit down and write what comes into your head. Best of all, of course, according to a plan: that way at least you can see progress. Without that, the brain refuses to work.

Salnikov Recommends: When asked in an interview with Meduza who his favorite literary character is, Salnikov answers Ostap Bender, from Ilf and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs. He then adds “not long ago I also took a liking to Dostoevsky in his own letters. He’s already a literary hero in them and he’s still literarily polishing up his life in those letters. He’s all tired, tormented, firmly knowing everything will end badly.”