Igor Yefimov

Igor Markovich Yefimov or Igor Efimov (Russian: И́горь Ма́ркович Ефи́мов; born August 8, 1937, Moscow) is an American (since 1978) philosopher, writer and publisher of Russian origin. Some of his works were published under the pen name Andrei Moscovit. Together with Boris Vakhtin, Sergei Dovlatov, Vladimir Gubin, and Vladimir Maramzin, he founded the Leningrad writers' group "City Dwellers" (Russian Gorozhane), whose works circulated in samizdat.[1] He is a founder of Hermitage Publishers, publisher of works by such writers as Sergei Dovlatov.

Volume Nine of the Kratkaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya (Short Literary Encyclopedia), published in 1978, contains the short entry: "Yefimov, Igor Markovich, is a Russian Soviet writer, b. 1937. Graduated from Leningrad Politechnical Institute in 1960, member Union of Writers since 1965, author of the novels Smotrite, Who's Here!), Laborantka (Lab Girl), Svergnut Look Kto Prishel! (Vsyakoye Igo (To Overthrow Every Yoke), children's books, plays, movie, radio and television scripts." That volume of the encyclopedia appeared in the same month that the train carried the "Soviet writer" and his family to the West, crossing the border into Austria.

It was only after he left the USSR that Yefimov could acknowledge that the works of philosophy, Prakticheskaya Metafizika (Practical Metaphysics) and Metapolitika (Metapolitics), that had circulated in Samizdat and had been published in the West under the pseudonym Andrey Moskovit, were his. Settling in America, he soon founded the Hermitage publishing house (in 1981), which published poetry, novels, memoirs, and essays that could not be published in Soviet Russia. Many works of the Russian writers and poets who are well known today were first published by Hermitage: books by Sergei Averintsev, Vasily Aksenov, Fridrikh Gorenstein, Sergei Dovlatov, Lev Losev, Anatoly Naiman, Ernst Neizvestny, Mark Popovsky and others. Yefimov also wrote and published more novels—Kak Odna Plot' (As One Flesh - 1980), Arkhivy Strashnogo Suda (The Judgement Day Archives - 1982, English translation in 1988), Sed'maya Zhena (The Seventh Wife - 1990, English translation in 1994) -- as well as a historical investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy (English translation in 1997) and some collections of essays.

After 1991 nearly all of Yefimov's books were published in Russia, now that it was freed from Communists. Three of his new novels—Ne Mir, No Mech (Not Peace, But a Sword - 1996), Sud Da Delo (Telling It To The Judge or Lolita and Holden Twenty Years Later - 2001), and Novgorodskii tolmach (An Interpreter from Novgorod - 2003) -- were first published in the literary journal Zvezda, which also published his new work of philosophy, Stydnaya Tayna Neravenstva (The Shocking Secret of Inequality), as a series of articles. All the critics who have written about Yefimov have noted the philosophical nature of his prose; Joseph Brodsky described him as belonging "to the great Russian tradition of philosophical writers in the vein of Herzen."[2] However, his books also have another characteristic, noted by Yakov Gordin in his foreword to the Russian edition of the novel Arkhivy Strashnogo Suda (The Judgment Day Archives): "The real hero of Yefimov's prose has always been human passion. To put it in other words - will in arousal." Five of Yefimov's books have been published in the US in English translation:

In French:

Works (incomplete list)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Cornwell, Neil (2013). Reference Guide to Russian Literature. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. p. 260. ISBN 9781134260706.
  2. ↑ Panconesi, Emiliano, and Irina Dvisova, "La letteratura riabilitata: da Nabokov e Cvetaeva a Solženicyn e Brodskij". In Proc. Conf. Circolo di Cultura Politica Fratelli Rosselli, Florence, 2004. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
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