Andrei Sinyavsky wrote Strolls with Pushkin while confined to
Dubrovlag, a Soviet labor camp, smuggling the pages out a few at a time
to his wife. His irreverent portrait of Pushkin outraged émigrés and
Soviet scholars alike, yet his "disrespect" was meant only to rescue
Pushkin from the stifling cult of personality that had risen up around
him. Anglophone readers who question the longstanding adoration for
Pushkin felt by generations of Russians will enjoy tagging along on
Sinyavsky's strolls with the great poet, discussing his life, fiction,
and famously untranslatable poems. This new edition of Strolls with
Pushkin also includes a later essay Sinyavsky wrote on the artist,
"Journey to the River Black."