Author and authority in the work of Vladimir Sorokin

The article traces the dynamics of Sorokin`s art from Ochered` with its innovative poetics to the mature dystopian works Den` oprichnika and Sakharnyi Kreml`. Among other observations on Sorokin`s style and his literary universe, the author focuses on allusions and references to Russian literature (from Andrei Platonov and Evgenii Zamiatin to Solzhenitsyn and Vasilii Grossman), and draws analogies between Sorokin`s works and Alexander Sokurov's films showing that the writer and the film director view post-Soviet Russia as history's end-game. The author also explains the structure of Sorokin's "dialogue" with Russian classical literature, and ways in which the writer represents concepts and images from Russian literature in his novels and screenplays (Mishen`, Den oprichnika).