Efimov Igor Markovich, writer: biography and creativity

The writer I. M. Efimov has been living in America since 1975. His works - both in style, in semantic saturation, and in texture - are quality prose that has absorbed international literary traditions. The name of this author is little known to Russian-speaking readers, but those who got acquainted with the books of Igor Markovich note that his novels intertwine the philosophy of life, a fascinating plot and the events described.

about the author

I. M. Efimov was born in 1937 in the family of a diplomat who was shot in the late 30s. In the atmosphere surrounding him since childhood as the son of an “enemy of the people”, in the evacuation and post-war Leningrad, he had to defend his free will, which was crushed both in the Stalinist gymnasium and in the St. Petersburg gateways. These facts from the biography are reflected in his novel “Like One Flesh”.

In 1960, he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Leningrad and in 1973 - the literary. He made his debut as a writer in 1965 with the story “Look who has come!” Based on the reality surrounding him, a turbine engineer. According to Igor Efimov, at that time he managed to print only children's works. Of course, he took up adult topics, but he constantly caught himself thinking that the pen carefully avoids reality. The feeling of robbing himself made him send his works to Western publications under the pseudonym Andrei Moskovit.

Emigration

In the years 60-70, writers became the target of harassment by the authorities. Chukovskaya and Voinovich were expelled from the Writers' Union. Solzhenitsyn was taken to Lefortovo and declared a traitor to the Motherland. In 1978, Efimov emigrated to America. About the years spent in the USSR, he told in the first volume of memoirs “Connection of times”, in the second he spoke about life in America. In the USA, the writer was invited to the Ardis Publishing House, and his wife became an employee of Radio Liberty. In America, Efimov published eight novels written in Russia.

Memories

In 2005, Igor Yefimov’s memories of Brodsky came out - “The Nobel Parasite”. The book about Dovlatov caused a sensation. The output of The Epistolary Romance (2001) is connected with the scandal - Dovlat letters were published without the consent of his wife, and the publishing house paid a huge fine. Two volumes of memoirs “Connection of Times” (2011) are incredibly valuable autobiographical books with hundreds of famous names and details.

Children's books

The adventure story “Snowstorm over the House of Cards” introduces readers to the little heroes who went home from school, and a snowstorm caught them on the way. Seeing tractor tracks in the snow, they joyfully wandered along the rut. The work with elements of science fiction was written very realistically, the author managed to grab the most important thing from the days past and put it on the pages of the book. Telephone operators tried to contact the forester’s house, not far from the science lab, but only dogs and gunshots were heard. That's where the guys got there. Entering the building where the laboratory was located, they found people unconscious. What happened here?

The Tauride Garden by Igor Efimov is a funny touching story that tells about post-war Leningrad. Everything here reminds of the war: residents returning from evacuation; German prisoners building houses; girls playing in the “food line”; boys watching with suspicion of prisoners. The stories “I want to Siverskaya” and “Explosions in the lessons” also tell about the life of boys of the 50s. Many authors write about post-war Leningrad. As expected, in their books there is a lot of fear, deprivation, hunger, but in the works of Efimov little heroes live a childish life - they get to know each other, make friends, go to camp, and participate in olympiads. Not enough food, no clothes and shelter, but life does not stand still.

Historical novels

The first work written in this genre was Igor Efimov’s novel “Overthrow Every Yoke”, telling about the fate of one of the leaders of the English revolution - John Lilburne. His life is both a feat and a tragedy of a man ahead of his time. The author managed to show the relationship of the Lilburn spouses, to emphasize that it is not duty, but only love, that makes the wife follow her husband, support him in everything, abandon relatives, live in poverty and sacrifice herself.

The novel “The Emperor’s Bride” refers to the sunset of Ancient Rome, about the rulers, about the barbarians who captured the millennial Rome, about the fate and teachings of Pelagius the British. Events come to life here and people foreshadowing the sunset of the Roman Empire. All intertwined - Christians, ready to whip a brother not only on both cheeks, but also to burn, drive, beat; barbarians invoking their gods and making human sacrifices. In this confusion, a new world was born, people lived, studied and searched for the truth.

Action literature

“Unfaithful” is a novel based on the emotional experiences of a woman for whom infidelity is simply a “lifestyle”. The writer Igor Efimov shows what kind of impasse this behavior can lead to, and the story gradually turns from a leisurely short story into an action-packed thriller. The heroine-philologist writes letters to famous writers and poets, each of them has their own unique situation, when infidelity drove them into a corner. The book is not only fascinating, but also informative, as it replenishes the piggy bank “from the life of the great”.

The novel “Archives of the Last Judgment” (1982) is an action-packed work. This is a detective story, an adventure novel, and an action movie. Not only a genre cocktail, but also a geographical one - Paris, Moscow, Tallinn, Boston; motley characters - terrorists, geologists, scientists, mafiosi, KGB officers. Everything is connected by various feelings - hatred, love, suspicions, but most importantly - the hope of resurrection, faith in the recipe for immortality. The work is written in a beautiful language, there are magnificent metaphors and a meaningfully told story.

“The Seventh Wife” is an amazing action-packed novel, released in 1990. The saturation of events and the wise-ironic arguments of the author about the psychology of relations between men and women turn the work into a fusion of genres - philosophical and adventure. The hero of the book was married several times, as a decent man got married, had children and ... left the family. The daughter from her first marriage left for the Inverted Country (Soviet Union), and the father went in search of her. The author surprisingly managed to show both the Soviet and the foreign world. The way a person, once in the Union, changes his views, speech, his life.

“New Babylon”

Igor Efimov’s novel “The Court and the Affair” (2001) in a sense “picks up” and develops the main theme of “The Seventh Wife”, also describing a leapfrog of love and parting. But if the hero of "The Seventh Wife" obeys the rules and every time obediently goes through the divorce procedure, then the hero of the work "Court and deed" falls in love with a married woman who is disappointed in marriage and despaired of finding happiness. Because of her, Kiper, as the name of the hero of the novel, meets with opponents of monogamous marriages, looking for new options for arranging the family. The novel ends with the defeat of the protagonist - he loses his beloved, not finding in his soul a response to her antimonogamous quest.

If you remove the subtitle of the book "Lolita and Hodlden", the reader will not even notice that the author "resurrected" the names of the two most famous teenagers of the 50s, borrowing them from Nabokov and Salinger. When the novel was published in a journal, the subtitle was lost, and many reviewers overlooked this fact. The work “Court and deed” opens, in chronological order, the tetralogy “New Babylon”. The novel takes place in the early 70s. The reader will meet here with friends from the Doomsday Archives (1982) heroes - Leida Rigel and her children.

From the book "The Seventh Wife" (1990), whose events transfer the reader to the mid-80s, Golda Sebezh migrated to the novel "The Court and the Case" (2001). As Igor Markovich Efimov himself says, the general name “New Babylon” would suit this cycle, since this tetralogy is united by one theme, deep and requiring universal attention — the conflict of fidelity and love. The events of the latest novel “The Accused” (2009) take place in 2001, and on its pages the reader will meet with the characters mentioned in all the works listed above.

Philosophical work

The philosophical nature of prose was noted by all critics who wrote about the work of Igor Markovich. One of these works was Practical Metaphysics, published excerpts in the journal Grani in 1973. A separate book was published in 1980 by Andrei Moskovit. As befits philosophical treatises, it raises an eternal problem - comprehension of the mystery of being. “Practical metaphysics” is not a set of verbal combinations, but an example of a deep and conscientious approach to the problem. The author did not say anything fundamentally new, but critics attributed this work to professional philosophy: carefully verified terminology, well-constructed sentences, individual episodes deliver aesthetic pleasure with their imagery.

In Igor Efimov’s book “The Shameful Secret of Inequality” (1999), the author shows that people have varying degrees of giftedness and constantly compete in the application of their abilities. But talking about this is not accepted. The slogans of all the major revolts and revolutions called for equality. Take the same communist system. It would seem that they destroyed the estates, property inequality, achieved an ideal social structure, but in the midst of this triumph in the 30s a terrible Stalinist terror erupted. Why did this happen? The author seeks an answer to the question of why the intellectual-industrial elite was destroyed, and this happened not only in Russia and China, but also in other communist countries.

It is difficult to determine the genre of the book “Without the Bourgeoisie”, published in 1979 under the pseudonym Andrei Moskovit. For the textbook, this work is too exciting, it does not look like notes on agriculture, as it is too strictly documented. The work of Igor Efimov is true, the author gives many examples of the inefficiency of a planned economy, while he does not apply to the Stalin period, because in this case you will have to answer the question of why the system that worked under Stalin stopped working under Khrushchev.

Other works

• Collection of articles “The Burden of Good” (1993).
• “Double Portraits” - a collection of articles published in 2003.
• The novel “Spectacles” was released in 1967 in a Samizdat manner, gradually, by the efforts of censors, it was tricky, and, according to the author, only fragments remained from the work.
• “Who killed President Kennedy?” (1991) - the writer did a great job with numerous sources and, it would seem, proved that Cuban intelligence was behind the assassination of the president.
• The historical novel “Novgorod Tolmach”, published in 2004.