Oleg Zaionchkovsky

"The debutant Oleg Zaionchkovsky, author of the novel "Sergeev and The Town" has overshadowed the recognised authors whose books have not made it on to the list of finalists… And quite rightly, the Jury has recognised the extraordinary skill of this debutant."
Moskovsky Komsomolets

" … the original freshness which this book so clearly exudes, not through the objects of the description, not even through the amusing characters, but through the intonation – which comes across as so light and cheerful that it appears completely un-Russian."
Novy Ochevidets

"It is a long time since we have had a narrator of such vigour… Zaionchkovsky has managed to recreate his wide-ranging, fresh and dynamic literary cosmos out of a sphere long since appropriated by literature and which, so it seemed, had been sufficiently reinvented and in fact almost worn out – the provincial town in the back of beyond."
Russky Zhurnal

ABOUT SERGEEV I GORODOK

"Oleg Zaionchkovsky finds a rhythm, a prose tone which comes close to the very best and the most animated classic Russian prose".
LEONID KOSTYUKOV

"Using discreet metamorphoses these short novels transform themselves into a completely epic portrait."
NINA NAZAROVA

"I do not think that the best competitor for the national bestseller, Oleg Zaionchkovsky, needs to be sad that he didn’t ‘make it’. He is a serious writer and knows his value … He has proven that lyricism and remaining true to oneself do not necessarily mean monotony – it is all the more interesting, what this writer, an artist to the core, will put into words in the future."
ANDREI NEMZER


ABOUT PETROVICH:

"On has to understand and appreciate »Petrovich« as a classical work far more than as a post modernist child. It is the novel of a contemporary author who is not pursuing any fashion either in terms of subject nor grammar. What can be more honest and unpretentious? What can be more truthful and more interesting?"
VOPROSY LITERATURY

"The greatest quality of Zaionchkovsky’s »Petrovich« is not the preciseness of his character portraits but the fact that the novel works like a bullet following more than one gravitational force … above all Zaionchkovsky’s prose has what the English would call understatement – a hidden irony, the absolute reluctance on the part of the narrator to impose his opinion on the other person: every statement is enclosed by a Barrier Reef of restraint and counterbalance." LEV DANILKIN, AFISHA

"Every insignificant happening is narrated with such attention, warmth and a sense of importance that it is transformed into an magical enticement … everything is transformed by Zaionchkovsky’s pen into a magical kingdom, sometimes attractive but sometimes also appalling."
MAJA KUCHERSKAYA, ROSSIISKAYA GAZETA

"The author of this book has a rare talent, he can see the cosmos in terms of microscopic particles and that gives his work a calm symmetry but also a tension not accessible to the majority of contemporary authors."
TIME OUT MOSCOW