also known asSergei Donatovich Dovlatov-Mechik
journalistwriter
Sergei Dovlatov was of the the greatest writers of the XX century. As a writer he was formed in Leningrad, but success came to him in America, where he has lived since 1979. The writer knew:heaven and hell - within ourselves. Thats why there are no saints or sinners. Dovlatov believed in one thing - "a smile of reason." His prose is staged, filmed, studied in many schools and universities. His books were translated into many languages.
Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov was born in Ufa, where his parents had been evacuated during the Second World War. In 1944 his family returned to Leningrad. Soon Donat Isaacovich left the family.
His father, Donat Isaacovich Mechik was a theater director. Sergei's mother - Nora Dovlatova also worked as director, but later became a literary proofreader.
While studying he met young Leningrad poet Yevgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Joseph Brodsky. However, after two and a half years of education, Sergey was expelled from the university for academic failure.
In the 1962 he was drafted into the Soviet Internal Troops and served as a prison guard in high-security camps to the 1965. After demobilization he entered the faculty of journalism of Leningrad State University. At the same time he was working as a journalist in the factory newspaper of the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute.
In 1972-1975 he lived in Estonia, where he worked as a freelancer and full-time journalist in the newspaper "Sovietskaya Estonia" and "Vecherniy Tallinn."Also he wrote reviews for magazines "Neva" and "Star".His typeset 'formes' of his first book were destroyed under the order of the KGB. In 1976, some stories by Dovlatov had been published in Western Russian-language magazines, including "Continent", "Time and us", resulting in his expulsion from the Union of Journalists of the USSR.
In 1978 because of the prosecution of the authorities Dovlatov had to emigrate to Vienna and then moved to New York.
Since 1979 to 1982 he published liberal emigre newspaper "The New American" in Russian.
By the mid-80s Sergei Dovlatov had finally achieved great success among readers. His articles appeared in the popular magazineh "The New Yorker", "Partizan Review"". He became the second after Nabokov's Russian author, who had the honor to appear in such reputable journals During twelve years of exile he published twelve books in the United States and Europe.
In the Soviet Union, the writer was known from Samizdat and Radio Liberty. After his death and the fall of the Soviet Union, numerous collections of his short stories were published in Russia.
Sergey Dovlatov stands out in Russian literature as a most enigmatic man of letter, his works bordering between documentary evidence and play of fancy, between seeming simplicity and inconceivable magnetism, between risque humour and wisdom. His major audiences reside on two continents divided by the Pacific and the oceans of difference.
In 1995 a literary award named after Sergei Dovlatov was established.
The Invisible Book (1977)
The Compromise(1981)
The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard's Story(1982)
The Reserve(1983)
The March of the Single People(1983)
Ours(1983)
Demarche of Enthusiasts(cowritten with Vagrich Bakhchanyan and N. Sagalovskij, 1985)
Craft: A Story in Two Parts(1985)
A Foreign Woman(1986)
Suitcase(1986)
The Performance(1987)
Not only Brodsky: Russian Culture in Portraits and Jokes (cowritten with M. Volkova, 1990)
Notebooks(1990)
Affiliate(1990)
One can revere Tolstoy's mind. Delight in Pushkin's finesse. Appreciate the spiritual quest of Dostoyevsky. Gogol's humor. And so on. Yet Chekhov is the only one I would want to resemble.
He was twice married: on Asya Pekurovskoy (1960-1968) and Elena Dovlatova (1969-1971), and was cohabiting with Zibunovaja Tamara (1975-1978). His first daughter (Kate) was born in 1966 from his second wife, and the second (Masha) - in 1970 from the first. The third daughter Dovlatova (Alexandra) was born from his common-law wife in 1975, and the last child: son (Nick or Nicholas Dawley) - in 1984, in exile again from Helena Dovlatova.