Aleksandr Terekhov
Terekhov's language is packed with forceful imagery and the slang of modern Russian. If we wish to identify precedents for his work we might look to Saltykov-Shchedrin from the 19th century for his satire of provincial life, and Platonov in the early Soviet period for his range of imagery and individuality of language. Terekhov, however, is a young and vital writer drawing very much on his own resources and experiences, with a distinctive and individual intonation - The Moscow Times
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Terekhov was born in June 1966 in the provincial town of Tula in Central Russia. After serving in the army he graduated in journalism from the Moscow State University. He soon won acclaim as a writer with his stories about his army experiences and about the early perestroika chaos he was witnessing.
For his early novel 'Buddy' he was severely persecuted by the Army Command. THis novel together with a cycle of army stories, 'A Conscript's Memoirs', established his as one of the most talented Russian authors of the 1990s.
His next novel, 'A Winter Day Starting a New Life', describes his life in a rat-infested student hostel, a hungry but happy life in the early perestroika years of great hopes. 'Letters of a Russian Traveller' is a cycle of stories about the social ills exposed by the years of glasnost.
"I like The Rat-Killer... I always do like these sardonic Russian tales - a genre on their own - that take satire to its extreme" says Doris Lessing of Terekhov's novel 'The Rat-Killer'. The novel is probably still the best portrait of the perestroika in the provinces. It draws a clear parallel between rat and human communities: as the phantasmagoric post-communist reality develops into nightmare, the greed, cunning and malice of the humans comes increasingly to resemble the behaviour of large communities of destructive rodents, while the rats acquire increasingly human features.
Read an excerpt of 'The Rat-Killer'.
Terekhov's latest novel, 'The Stone Bridge', is an investigation into the mysteries of Stalin's Moscow.
Main published works
Мемуары срочной службы ('A Conscript's Memoirs'), Vagrius, 1995
English: 'Memoirs of my Army Stint', Glas, 2007
Зимний день начала новой жизни ('A Winter Day Starting a New Life'), Vagrius, 1995
('Letters of a Russian Traveller')
Крысобой ('The Rat-Killer')
German, Beck Verlag
German, DTV
English: 'The Rat-Killer', Alma Books, 2008