An Interview with Alexey Kovalev

I was born in Moscow, Russia. Upon graduation from acting school, I worked as an actor and theater director.

In 1981, I immigrated to the USA as a political refugee. Since 1984, I have been employed by the Russian Service of the Voice of America as a writer, editor, and Chief of the Cultural Desk, developing various programs on American Literature, Art, Philosophy, and History. In 1986, I was awarded the Gold Medal at the New York International Radio Festival for the Tribute to Samuel Beckett program. In 2006, I retired from the VOA.

My publications include numerous short stories and articles in various Russian media abroad. The novel What’s Hecuba to Him (in Russian) was published in 1991 by Boston Clio & Co Publishing House. Slavic Gospel Press, Chicago, published my Russian translations of Dan Richardson’s Eternity in Their Hearts and Francis A. Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live?

In 2003, Publishing House Limbus Pres in St. Petersburg, Russia, published my novel Sisyphus, which was nominated for several awards, including the Russian Booker, National Bestseller, and Apollon Grigoriev Award.

By 2018 I began translating my works into English. First was Sisyphus, published by Alternative Book Press, New Jersey. Then, my cooperation with Atmosphere Publishing House in Houston, Texas, started. А́ Deux, a novel, and Home Within a Landscape, a novel, came out in 2022.

Recently (2025), two more novels were published – Adam’s Garden and The Other Book.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I did not look for a title, and it came up by itself. The preliminary title was “Promises,” which is still reflected in the first lines of the novel. It presented a starting point for the story. Then, along with the main character and events development, it became clear that the best way to introduce the story was to name the man and the place, both of which brought with them unexpectedly additional references. One of those revelations that come with creative writing as undeserved blessing.

As Michael Cunningham once said, there are aspects of writing that one can’t and probably shouldn’t explain. It’s almost as if you open a door, and there they are.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

Again, I believe it is a mystery of vocation. I was an avid reader from my childhood, and of course, many authors made an unforgettable impression on me – but the same goes for a multitude of other readers and does not turn them into writers. Half of my life was dedicated professionally to a different form of art, drama theatre, when I worked as an actor and director. My mother was an actress. Father – a playwriter, so this surrounding certainly influenced my interests. But strangely enough, in the beginning, I tried to deviate from it, and my first choice of professional education was electronics, particularly – computers, virtually non-existent at that time, especially in Russia. It was the end of the 50s, and the course of electronic computing machines at the Technical school was the first in the country.

However, it was not intended to happen. I did not complete that course, and in a couple of years I enrolled in the Acting department of the famous Moscow Art Theatre School.

Meanwhile, first attempts at writing prose began alongside and quite early. In fact, the subject of one of my earlier novels, What’s Hecuba to Him (not translated into English), was Theatre. Later, these two infatuations continued on even terms until writing eventually prevailed and consumed me totally.

As to initial motivation, I came to think that the aspiration to create springs out of natural aptitude and does not need any additional impetus.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

As I have already mentioned, writing was not my first choice. Besides my career in theatre, I used to work as a lighting technician. After emigration, I worked as a handyman, plumber, and printing make-up artist at the newspaper before entering the Voice of America as a journalist.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

First, I have to confess. Under the avalanches of recreational literature, like romances, fantasies, thrillers, science fiction, or detective stories, the existence of belles-lettres should be viewed as magic. And it is, considering an additional pressure, that the recently transformed publishing industry applies to authors. While traditional ways of acquiring agents are largely restricted now by the requirement of previous notability, the new enterprise assumed the name of “hybrid publishing.” For some unfathomed reasons, adventurous entrepreneurs assumed that a writer always has extra money which can be used for bringing their work to the public.

Unfortunately, this development is in sync with the current disregard for the Arts in general and for their critical significance for humanity, despite their negligible market value, unless it is blown out of proportion by the latest fad or aggressive advertisement.

Obviously, such a state of affairs has roots and reasons, and in my spare time I am trying to enquire into them, but my job – or métier, if you will – is not the one of an academic or a preacher. So, I write books. Books eventually acquire a life of their own and are desperate to be read and enjoyed. Being so brutally cornered, authors have no other choice but to become genuine philanthropists, albeit unrecognized, since they contribute to the society, which is unaware of their struggle. I am humbled by the opportunity to be one of them.

So, the only meaningful and rewarding part of publishing my books is the sense of fulfilling my obligation.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

Ah, my favorite topic. The mysterious effect of Art mostly indescribable despite of significant efforts of experts.

But it requires a bit wider perspective.

“Now, no one will listen to songs.

The prophesied days have begun.

Latest poem of mine, the world has lost Its wonder,.

Don’t break my heart, don’t ring out.

A while ago, free as a swallow,

You accomplished your morning flight,

But now you’ve become a hungry beggar,

Knocking in vain at strangers’ gates.”

Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote these lines at the time of the last crisis of the rich culture, produced by the historic catastrophe of the First World War and the looming wave of Revolution. The wholeness of existence in the ending epoch organically included the strongly developed sphere of aesthetic experience. The raft of new, unexpected, and quite drastic events was deafening and enervating, destroying integrity and harmony. The loss of interest in oversaturated “complementary reality” was apparently inevitable.

The current crisis evolves at a rather reversed condition. The sense of perplexity was generated not by general catastrophe but by a few unexpected political events, which brought the realization that society was developing in the wrong direction. Yesterday’s life, commonly prosperous and full of multivarious happenings, was, however, aesthetically scanty. The need for an expanded and profound reality was not only weakened but almost disappeared. It was these last few decades when the singing “Hungry Beggar” was knocking in vain at strangers’ gates.

Perhaps the absence of the artful aspect of life that usually results in the destitution of sentience was one of the reasons for society’s poor choice of path. Long estrangement from interaction with the Arts diminishes the capability of keeping in mind the whole picture of reality.

But despite the fact that the role of Art in historical development is extremely important, the mechanism of its effect is not simple or straightforward, even in the best possible times. One might ask why, if Art is so vital for humans’ Nature did not provide us with the ability to absorb it easily. It might be a result of one of the evolutionary protective devices since the dynamic of aesthetic interchange should be conceived as a clash, sometimes quite an uneasy one. First, it is experienced by the artist himself. As another poet, Marina Tsvetayeva, mentioned: “What is human creativity? A backlash, nothing more. A thing hits me, and I respond: give back a favor. So it is a reciprocal blow, not a thing… The only thing I want is to let the thing hit me and, withstanding, return the present. Recompense…”

When an artist succeeds in this endeavor, something similar should happen to the reader as well in his encounter with the poem (or any form of art). But if the poet’s fearlessness (daring, if you will) comes with his calling, the reader needs some additional reasons to get engaged in this kind of clash. The common self-preservation instinct does not provide such a reason, therefore protecting a human being from unnecessary commotion. He needs a special courage or openness to risk such an experience. Humans, en masse, tend to follow this instinct, and at the first signal of alert – and a genuine work of art always sends this signal – they abandon the new acquaintance and limit their impression to trivial leisure. But such seemingly benign timidity eventually affects the general ethical state of mind, relaxing moral standards.

This dynamic proves again the great importance of Art, which, besides everything else, is meant to play a role in nurturing civic virtue by exercising emotional bravery. The prolonged absence of aesthetic practice diminishes general sensitivity or at least dramatically narrows it, and in times of acute social tension, such a deficiency could result in dubious moral decisions. I guess it might have played a certain role in the unpredictably wide popularity of the Nazi movement in Germany, the decorative features of which were aesthetically galling.

It is of interest to look at how Tsvetayeva further develops her metaphor of the creative clash. She insists that if an artist does not allow the thing “to hit him,” instead of recompensation, only reflection remains, mimesis. “To reflect means to repeat,” she wrote, “those who think they reflect are just repeating, distorting the object to a gruesome, dead irrecognizability.”

The same apparently happens to the reader/audience. Refusal to take a strong, akin to a blow impression, reducing the experience to a superficial pleasure produced by the entertainment art, usually based on repetition, leads to the distortion of the depicted object – that is, of reality. By interpreting it most safely, humans not only atrophy their ethical fortitude but absorb a contorted image of reality.

Therefore, the sense of perplexity and wrong direction might be invoked not by events themselves but by their false interpretation and also by certain timidity that prevents a closer look at the substance of those phantoms.

The notion eventually comes to the Fear of Arts, which is, to my mind, one of the destructive tendencies of our time. But then, one of the possible ways to redemption might be an active return to Culture – and Art in particular, a rejection of succumbing to “a fear in small things” practice.

In short, my favorite reader is the one who enjoys reading as much as I enjoy writing.

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