Tolstaya, Tatyana

Tolstaya, Tatyana tōlstī´yä [key], 1951–, Russian short-story writer and essayist. Increasingly recognized as one of the major European writers of the postwar generation, Tolstaya is part of a Russian literary dynasty—Aleksey N.Tolstoy's granddaughter and LeoTolstoy's great-grandniece. Reflecting the influences of Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, her work focuses with wit, intensity, and ironic compassion on the gap between her characters' dreams and the shattering reality of contemporary Russia. Her translated collections includeOn the Golden Porch(1990) andSleepwalker in a Fog(1992), stories, andPushkin's Children: Writings on Russia and Russians(2003), essays. Her satirical first novel,The Slynx(2000, tr. 2003), is an historical allegory set in a dystopian, mutant-inhabited post-nuclear-holocaust Russia.

See H. Goscilo,The Explosive World of Tatyana N. Tolstaya(1995).

See more Encyclopedia articles on:Russian and Eastern European Literature: Biographies