Mastering Chaos: The Metafictional Worlds of Evgeny Popov

«This is an interesting and important book, the first attempt to encapsulate the highly idiosyncratic œuvre and career of Evgeny Popov, a major and controversial figure in the late Soviet and post-Soviet literary landscape.» (Michael Pushkin, University of Birmingham) «Morris is excellent in his treatment of the writer’s attitude towards the past and history; and he differentiates between Popov’s more nuanced and ambiguous view of the Soviet experiment and those writers, likewise liberals, who have adopted a ‘confessional’ stance.» (Robert Porter, University of Bristol) «A broad contextualization of the works of this important Russian author.» (Christine Engel, University of Innsbruck) This is the first book devoted to the writings of Evgeny Popov (born 1946), a major and controversial figure in the late Soviet and post-Soviet literary landscape. The author uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources, many of them in Russian, alongside detailed analysis of the novels and stories themselves. The introduction charts the course of Popov’s personal and professional biography, including major turning points such as the Metropole affair of 1979. A chapter on critical contexts provides a clear account of the history of Popov’s reception. Other chapters focus on the first collection of short stories and the complexities of narrative voice, the concept of the ‘non-elucidatory principle’ at the heart of Popov’s poetics, and the short story cycles in Metropole and Catalogue, from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Finally the author addresses the key phenomenon of Popov’s self-fictionalization in both his shorter and longer works up to the present day.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Personal and professional biography – Critical contexts and Reception – Writing ‘Pornography of the Spirit’: An Introduction to Popov’s Short Stories – Narration and Discourse: The Refusal of Significance in the Short Story – ‘Life’s Tragedy I’ll Transform into Reverie-Farce’: Short Story Cycles in Metropole and Catalogue – From Story to Self: Biography and the Authorial Person as Narrative Objects – Whose Soul is a Patriot? Making ‘Non-Existent’ Persons History in The Soul of a Patriot – Resurrecting the Soul of a Patriot and Refusing the Novel in The Splendour of Life and Later Works.

About the Author :
Jeremy Morris is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Birmingham. His interests include contemporary Russian literature, culture and society and his current research is focused on ethnographic approaches to understanding lived experience in the former Soviet Union.

Review :
«‘Mastering Chaos’ presents a thorough analysis of Popov’s work, traces the development of the manner of writing, shows structural connections with the works of other writers such as J. Joyce, D. Kharms, or A. P. Chekhov, and offers a broad contextualization of the works of this important Russian author.» (Christine Engel, The Russian Review 73, 2013/2)