Aleksey Varlamov Interview
Chris Mattison, a graduate student of the University of Iowa, interviews Aleksey Varlamov. Mattison translated Varlamov’s short story “Maurish and the Great Steppe” about a young man in a Russian army detachment in the steppes of central Asia who meets a woman who belongs to a nomadic tribe and he takes this woman and drives her to a deserted road and rapes her. Varlamov works at Moscow University as a professor. He feels that he is more so a writer than he is a professor, but every writer in Russia must have a second job to make a living. Varlamov talks about the main character of his work and says that he is not a military man, he is just a simple Russian worker who needed a job. The story “Maurish and the Great Steppe” is the main topic of the interview.
In: International Writing Program Archive
Authors: Varlamov, Alekseĭ
Date Recorded: September 04, 1997
Program: --
Format: interview
Contributors: Chris Mattison
Topics: Literature in translation