Between Dog and Wolf - by Sasha Sokolov (Hardcover)

About the Book

Sasha Sokolov is one of few writers to have been praised by Vladimir Nabokov, who called his first novel, A School for Fools, "an enchanting, tragic, and touching book." Sokolov's second novel, Between Dog and Wolf, written in 1980, has long intimidated translators because of its complex puns, rhymes, and neologisms.

Book Synopsis

Sasha Sokolov is one of few writers to have been praised by Vladimir Nabokov, who called his first novel, A School for Fools, "an enchanting, tragic, and touching book." Sokolov's second novel, Between Dog and Wolf, written in 1980, has long intimidated translators because of its complex puns, rhymes, and neologisms. Language rather than plot motivates the story--the novel is often compared to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake--and time, characters, and death all prove unstable. The one constant is the Russian landscape, where the Volga is a more-crossable River Styx, especially when it freezes in winter. Sokolov's fiction has hugely influenced contemporary Russian writers. Now, thanks to Alexander Boguslawski's bold and superb translation, English readers can access what many consider to be his best work.

Review Quotes

A bold, lyrical English version of this challenging work, where plot, character and chronology dissolve in the flood of Sokolov's rich prose and poetry, evoking an-often frozen-landscape.--Phoebe Taplin "Russia Beyond the Headlines"

Alexander Boguslawski's translation of Sokolov's 1980 Russian novel has achieved the near impossible by bringing the book to English audiences (for the first time) with its sardonic and punning soul intact.-- "New York Magazine"

How does one make the unknown, impossible transition from life to death? How does one make a decision based on appearances, limited information? What really happens in that in-between state? Between Dog and Wolf doesn't just tackle these questions, it makes them sing.--Elisabeth Cook "Lit All Over"

If Eugene Onegin is the encyclopedia of Russian life, then Between Dog and Wolf, a novel as indebted to Pushkin and Pasternak as it is to the Volga huntsmen among whom Sokolov lived at its inception, is the encyclopedia of a strange, unstable Russian language. Boguslawski's impressive translation resurrects it nearly forty years after its initial publication and brings it out from its twilight state.--José Vergara "Slavic and East European Journal"

In my view, since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been four great Russian wordsmiths, and Sasha Sokolov is certainly one of them. The other three are Andrei Bely, Vladimir Nabokov and Alexander Goldstein. These writers have shown that they could do with the language whatever they pleased, creating works of breathtaking stylistic complexity and sheer brilliance at the sentence level.-- "The Untranslated"

Intricate and rewarding--a Russian Finnegans Wake.-- "Vanity Fair"

One feels the caliber and creativity of the original. This is a riot of language, invaluable for scholars and fascinating to the curious.-- "Publishers Weekly"

One of the great living Russian writers.-- "Flavorwire"

A masterful feat. Boguslawski has created a discourse, or literary style, that captures Sokolov's at once folksy and fanciful, verbally playful, punning speech and is remarkably faithful to the subtleties of Sokolov's language.--Olga Matich, University of California, Berkeley

Sasha Sokolov's Between Dog and Wolf, delivered in Alexander Boguslawski's masterful translation, comprises a daring act of immersion into the depths of language that results in semantic spasms of the great Russian literary body. The highly experimental novel, which unquestionably belongs to the highest literary ranks, announces the twilight of the novelistic tradition, but already eagerly awaits its imminent dawn.--Nariman Skakov, Stanford University

Sokolov is one of those rare novelists whose primary concern is the praise and exploration of a language rather than the development of a position. In this, he is in the line of Gogol, Lermontov, Nabokov.--David Remnick, Washington Post

About the Author

Sasha Sokolov is the author of the novels A School for Fools (1976), Between Dog and Wolf (1980), and Astrophobia (1985) and the essay collection In the House of the Hanged (2011).

Alexander Boguslawski is professor of Russian at Rollins College and the translator of Sasha Sokolov's A School for Fools (2015) and In the House of the Hanged (2011).