The Modern Novel

Biography

Vyacheslav Shishkov was born in 1873 in Bezhetsk. His father was a merchant but, after a business failure, worked as a shop assistant. Shishkov studied civil engineering and then went to work in the Tomsk region of Siberia for twenty years. He travelled the region extensively, making maps of various districts. He wrote his first story in 1908 but, after encouragement from MaximGorky, he moved to Petrograd, where he worked in the Ministry of Transport and continued his writing career. He later returned to Siberia and started work on his magnum opus, Угрюм-река (Gloomy River). The first volume of his second great work, Емельян Пугачев (Emel’yan Pugachev), was published while he was living in Leningrad during the siege. He died in 1945 before it was finished. He is sadly virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. The only two works of his that have been translated into English are one relatively minor one and his magnum opus, which was privately printed and is not generally available.

Other links

Vyacheslav Shishkov
Shishkov, Vyacheslav Yakolevich
Шишков, Вячеслав Яковлевич (in Russian)
Вячеслав Яковлевич Шишков (in Russian)
Шишков Вячеслав Яковлевич (in Russian)
Вячеслав Яковлевич Шишков (in Russian)
Приволжский Край (Очерки) (article by Shishkov – in Russian)