One of the most brilliant Russian writers of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Zamyatin belongs to the tradition in Russian literature represented by Gogol, Leskov, Bely, Remizov, and, in certain aspects of their work, also by Babel and Bulgakov. It is a tradition, paradoxically, of experimenters and innovators. Perhaps the principal quality that unites them is their approach to reality and its uses in art - the refusal to be bound by literal fact, the interweaving of reality and fantasy, the transmutation of fact into poetry, often grotesque, oblique, playful, but always expressive of the writer's unique vision of life in his own, unique terms. Mirra Ginsburg
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Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian writer and a member of the group of writers known as the "Klopstikha-Smertnye" ("The Little Death" or "The Grimaces"). Zamyatin's best-known works are the dystopian novels "We" (1917) and "Invisible Cities" (1918). According to Zamyatin, his goal in writing was to create a world that would be free from censorship and free from laws and norms. He wanted to write a novel that would describe what it was like to live in such a world. He wanted his readers to experience these things for themselves instead of simply reading about them in books.

Source: The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

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