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Writer Vasily Aksenov in Critical Condition
Popular Russian author Vasily Aksenov is in critical condition after suffering a stroke. He had been hospitalized since January 15 in “serious but stable” before his condition began to deteriorate. He was admitted to the hospital after losing consciousness while driving. He was operated on at Sklifosovsky Institute to relieve a thrombosis on his carotid artery on the next day, after which he regained consciousness but was partially paralyzed and unable to speak. He is now connected to an artificial respiration system.
Aksenov recently celebrated his 75th birthday in Biarritz, France, where he has lived in recent years. He was diagnosed with heart arrhythmia last year. His last book, Rare Earth Elements, was publish last year.
Aksenov is a member of the so-called “generation of the sixties.” He, along with Andrey Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, Fazil Iskander and Bella Akhmadulina published the samizdat journal Metropol, which featured works that did not receive official permission to appear. The journal came out in the United States. Aksenov was deprived of his Soviet citizenship when he visited that country and subsequently taught Russian literature at George Mason University in Washington DC.
In the 1980s, his Soviet citizenship was restored and he went to work for Radio Liberty. His major works, which had been banned in the USSR, appeared here for the first time at that time. He won the Russian Booker Prize in 2004 for his novel Voltairiens and Voltairiennes. Aksenov had stated that he was writing his autobiography. Both of his parents was repressed under Stalin and he spent part of his childhood in a home for children of political prisoners.
www.kommersant.com
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