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Valentin Kataev
Biography
Valentin Kataev was born in Odessa in 1897. He served in the army during World War I. After the Revolution, he became a journalist as a member of the Ukrainian Press Bureau, whose members also included Olesha, Ilf and Bagritsky. In 1922 he went to Moscow where he was a contributor to several newspapers and in which his stories were published. His first success came with the publication of Rastrachiki (The Embezzlers) in 1927, a satire on Russia during the NEP period. However, he continued to write almost till his death in 1986, producing classics of socialist realism such as Время, вперед (Time, Forward), autobiographical works and, towards the of his career, experiments with a mixture of autobiography, dream and fiction. He is that rare bird – a good writer who survived throughout the Soviet period.
Books about Valentin Kataev
Robert Russell: Valentin Kataev
Other links
Kataev, Valentin Petrovich
Valentin Kataev
Катаев, Валентин Петрович (in Russian)
Катаев, Валентин Петрович (in Russian)
Bibliography
Works translated into English only
1927 Квадратура круга (Squaring the Circle, a Comedy in Three Acts)
1927 Растратчики (The Embezzlers)
1932 Время, вперед (Time, Forward)
1936 Белеет парус одинокий (Peace is Where the Tempests Blow; A White Sail Gleams)
1944 Жена (Wife)
1956 Хуторок в степи (The Cottage in the Steppe; The Small Farm in the Steppe
1966 Святой колодец (The Holy Well)
1967 Трава забвенья (The Grass of Oblivion)
1972 Разбитая жизнь, или Волшебный рог Оберона (A Mosaic of Life or The Magic Horn of Oberon: Memoirs of a Russian childhood)