Why Contemporary Russian Literature Is Thriving

Tectonic shifts in the cultural world occur slowly, and are difficult to observe in real time. Still, it’s now possible to conclude that the protracted “post-Soviet” period of Russian literature came to an end in about 2018 as books by millennial authors flooded the market. By 2022, when quantity began to give way to quality, it was no longer possible to ignore the growing demand for new Russian books. The number of new writers on the scene has continued to grow. Dozens of brilliant debuts are published every year, and many authors under the age of thirty-five already have two or three novels to their name. Of course, the older generation of writers is still around, but for the first time in post-Soviet history, they have ceded center stage to the young.