Iskander, Fazil Abdulovich(b. 1929), Russian writer. Born on March 6, 1929 in Sukhumi. The father, an Iranian by origin, was expelled from the USSR in 1938, the boy grew up with relatives on his mother’s (Abkhaz) side. He entered the Moscow Library Institute, in 1951 he transferred to the Literary Institute named after. A.M. Gorky (graduated in 1954). He was a literary employee of the newspapers “Bryansky Komsomolets” (1954–1955) and “Kurskaya Pravda” (1955–1956). He began publishing in 1952. From 1956 until the early 1990s, he lived in Sukhumi, worked at the Abkhaz State Publishing House, and regularly published poems in the magazine “Literary Abkhazia”; published books of poems Mountain Peaks (1957), The Kindness of the Earth (1959), Green Rain (1960), Children of the Black Sea (1961), Youth of the Sea (1964). Since the late 1950s, he has also been published in the magazines “Youth”, “Week” and “New World” along with V.P. Aksenov, O.G. Chukhontsev and others, having written the stories The Rooster, The Story of the Sea, Debtors, My uncle has the most honest rules (collections The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules, Forbidden Fruit, both 1966, etc.), in which he proved himself to be a master of colorful satirical sketches and ethnographic everyday life.

Instant and loud fame was brought to Iskander by the story Constellation of Kozlotur (1966) - a story full of humor and grotesquery about a typical phenomenon of the Soviet era, the next “initiation”. An Abkhazian village has been ordered to urgently start crossing a goat with a tour to breed some unusually productive breed. “It’s a good start, but not for our collective farm” - this formula for a cautious and firm rejection of an ignorant and ruinous “experiment” has become popular. The fusion of bright, with a precise sense of national character, literary ethnography, a rich comic palette (from gentle humor to merciless sarcasm), “chamber” lyricism and socio-political denunciation, the two-dimensionality of “Aesopian” language and the richness of lively colloquial speech, manifested in the story, characteristic of Iskander It is also distinguished by numerous works of memoirs by Iskander, written on behalf of (or through the introduction of this image) Sandro, a folk hero, an old man and a young man at the same time. The central one is the novel Sandro from Chegem (1973–1988, complete ed. 1989), consisting of separate fragments published since 1966 (the story of the same name, Uncle Sandro and the shepherd Kunta, Chegem gossip, Shepherd Mahaz, etc.), in which the main the hero claims a role akin to the images of Till Eulenspiegel or Khoja Nasreddin - a rogue and a sage, an exponent of the national character and popular “fronde”, and where the history of the country and, in it, the Abkhaz people is conveyed through the prism of his mocking and revealing perception (the chapter of Pira is especially noteworthy here Belshazzar, where, along with fictional characters, there are grotesque parodic images of Stalin, Kalinin, Beria, etc.). The problem of the catastrophic discrepancy between the patriarchal world of the national “outskirts” and the Soviet “metropolis” with its political and economic dictates is also highlighted in “children’s”, imbued, like all of Iskander’s work, with autobiographical-memoir motifs, novellas and stories about Chika (including . Defense of Chick, 1983), in the stories The Beginning, Trout Fishing in the Upper Kodor River, which even caused accusations of nationalism among some critics, On a Summer Day, Letter, Meeting on the Train, Poor Demagogue (all 1969), etc., up to the nostalgic-sounding stories The light of gloomy youth (1990), the novel Man and His Surroundings (1992–1993), the story Sofichka (1995).

Metaphorical nudity, in the spirit and style of the world dystopia of the 20th century. (E.I. Zamyatin, O. Huxley, J. Orwell), the philosophical and political fairy tale by Iskander Rabbits and Boas (1982, USA; 1987, Moscow) stands out, in which the state, led by the dictator Great Python and consisting of on the one hand, from the snake-eaters, and on the other, from silently, with the blessing of their King, rabbits and dumb native workers coming to them for food, branded with stinging satire in all its layers, who agreed to such an unnatural and cannibalistic “social contract” . The writer offers a unique form of protest (freedom to commit suicide in response to death under duress).

The seriousness of specific psychological analysis in the context of the moral atmosphere of the entire society is marked by Iskander's story The Sea Scorpion (1977), as well as the story The Little Giant of Big Sex (1979, filmed). The criminalization and actual dehumanization of the society of “victorious socialism” is revealed by the writer in socio-psychological and morally descriptive stories, marked by the plot sharpness of a detective story, in the stories Barmen Adgur and Chegemskaya Carmen (both 1986; the film adaptation of the latter became widely known - the film Thieves in Law, 1989), and crisis consciousness and loss of illusions of the post-Soviet society - in the stories of Pshad (1993), Thinking about Russia and the American (1997).

Iskander has been awarded a number of prestigious domestic and foreign literary awards.

Let's just talk like that. Let's talk about things that are optional and therefore pleasant. Let's talk about the funny properties of human nature embodied in our friends. There is no greater pleasure than talking about some of the strange habits of our friends. After all, we talk about this as if listening to our own healthy normality, and at the same time we mean that we could allow ourselves such deviations, but we don’t want to, we don’t need it. Or maybe we still want to?

One of the funny properties of human nature is that every person strives to complete his own image, imposed on him by the people around him. Others squeak and play out.

If, say, those around you wanted to see you as a performance mule, no matter how much you resist, nothing will happen. By your resistance, on the contrary, you will gain a foothold in this title. Instead of being a simple dutiful mule, you will turn into a stubborn or even embittered mule.

True, in some cases a person manages to impose his desired image on others. Most often, people who drink a lot, but regularly, succeed in this.

What a good person they say he would be if he didn’t drink. They say this about one of my friends: they say, a talented engineer of human souls ruins his talent with wine. Try to say out loud that, firstly, he is not an engineer, but a technician of human souls, and secondly, who saw his talent? You can’t say it, because it sounds ignoble. The man already drinks, and you still complicate his life with all sorts of slander. If you can't help the drinker, then at least don't bother him.

But still, a person plays out the image that is imposed on him by the people around him. Here's an example.

Once, when I was at school, the whole class worked on a vacant lot at the seaside, trying to turn it into a place for cultural recreation. Oddly enough, they actually did.

We planted the vacant lot with eucalyptus seedlings, a method of nest planting that was advanced for that time. True, when there were few seedlings left, and there was still enough free space in the vacant lot, we began to plant one seedling per hole, thus giving the opportunity for the new, progressive method and the old one to express themselves in free competition.

A few years later, a beautiful eucalyptus grove grew in the wasteland, and it was no longer possible to distinguish between nesting plantings and single ones. Then they said that single seedlings in the immediate vicinity of the nesting ones, envying them with Good Envy, catch up and grow without falling behind.

One way or another, now, when I come to my hometown, sometimes in the heat I rest under our now huge trees and feel like an Excited Patriarch. In general, eucalyptus grows very quickly, and anyone who wants to feel like an Excited Patriarch can plant eucalyptus and wait for its tall crowns to jingle like Christmas tree decorations.

But it's not that. The fact is that on that long-ago day, when we were cultivating a vacant lot, one of the guys drew the attention of the others to how I was holding the stretcher on which we were dragging the earth. The military instructor who was looking after us also noticed how I was holding the stretcher. Everyone noticed how I held the stretcher. It was necessary to find a reason for fun, and a reason was found. It turned out that I was holding the stretcher like a Notorious Lazy Man.

This was the first crystal that fell out of the solution, and then the busy process of crystallization began, which I myself now helped in order to finally crystallize in the given direction.

Now everything worked for the image. If I sat on a math test, not bothering anyone, calmly waiting for my friend to solve the problem, then everyone attributed this to my laziness, not stupidity. Naturally, I did not try to dissuade anyone from this. When I wrote Russian writing directly from my head, without using textbooks and cheat sheets, this all the more served as proof of my incorrigible laziness.

To stay in character, I stopped performing duties as a duty officer. They got used to this so much that when one of the students forgot to perform duty duties, the teachers, amid the approving noise of the class, forced me to erase from the board or drag physical instruments into the classroom. However, there were no instruments then, but we had to carry some things.

The development of the image led to the fact that I was forced to stop doing homework. At the same time, in order to keep the situation sharp, I had to study well enough.

For this reason, every day, as soon as the explanation of the material in humanities subjects began, I lay down on my desk and pretended to be dozing. If the teachers were outraged by my posture, I would say that I was sick, but I didn’t want to miss class to keep up. Lying on my desk, I listened carefully to the teacher’s voice, without being distracted by the usual pranks, and tried to remember everything he said. After explaining the new material, if there was time left, I volunteered to answer for the future lesson.

This pleased the teachers because it flattered their pedagogical pride. It turned out that they conveyed their subject so well and clearly that the students, even without using textbooks, learned everything.

The teacher gave me a good grade in the journal, the bell rang, and everyone was happy. And no one except me knew that the knowledge I had just recorded was collapsing from my head, like a barbell collapsing from a weightlifter’s hands after the judge’s sound: “The weight is taken!”

To be completely accurate, it must be said that sometimes, when I was lying on my desk, pretending to be dozing, I actually fell into a doze, although I continued to hear the teacher’s voice. Much later I learned that this, or almost this, method is used to learn languages. I think it won’t look too immodest if I now say that its discovery belongs to me. I am not talking about cases of complete falling asleep, because they were rare.

After some time, rumors about the Notorious Lazy Person reached the school principal, and for some reason he decided that it was I who stole the telescope, which disappeared from the geography office six months ago. I don't know why he decided that. Perhaps the very idea of ​​at least a visual reduction in distance, he decided, could most seduce a lazy person. I don't find any other explanation. Fortunately, they found the telescope, but they continued to look closely at me, for some reason expecting that I was going to pull some kind of trick. It soon became clear that I was not going to pull any tricks, that, on the contrary, I was a very obedient and conscientious lazy person. Moreover, being lazy, I studied quite well.

Then they decided to apply the method of massive education to me, which was fashionable in those years. Its essence was that all the teachers suddenly piled on one careless student and, taking advantage of his confusion, brought his academic performance to exemplary brilliance.

The idea of ​​the method was that after this other careless students, envying him with Good Envy, would themselves catch up to his level, like single plantings of eucalyptus trees. The effect was achieved by the surprise of a massive attack. Otherwise, the student could slip away or spoil the method itself.

As a rule, the experiment was a success. Before the small heap formed by the massive attack had time to dissolve, the transformed student stood among the best, impudently smiling with the embarrassed smile of the dishonored.

In this case, the teachers, envying each other, perhaps not with a very Good Envy, jealously watched in the magazine how he was improving his performance, and, of course, everyone tried to ensure that the performance curve in the segment of his subject did not disturb the victorious steepness. Either they piled on me too much, or they forgot my own decent level, but when they began to sum up the results of the experience of working on me, it turned out that I had been brought to the level of a candidate for medalist.

You’ll get the silver one,” the class teacher once announced, looking anxiously into my eyes.

...At the back of the kitchen hung wicker baskets in which chickens were laying. How they knew how to rush into these baskets remained a mystery to me. I stood on tiptoe and felt the egg. Feeling like both a Baghdad thief and a successful pearl diver, I sucked out my prey, immediately smashing it against the wall. Somewhere nearby, chickens clucked doomedly. Life seemed meaningful and beautiful. Healthy air, healthy food - and I was filled with juice, like a pumpkin in a well-manured garden.

In the house I found two books: Mayne Reid's "The Headless Horseman" and William Shakespeare's "Tragedies and Comedies." The first book shocked me. The names of the heroes sounded like sweet music: Maurice the Mustanger, Louise Poindexter, Captain Cassius Colhoun, El Coyote and, finally, in all the splendor of Spanish splendor, Isidora Covarubi de Los Llanos.

“Beg your pardon, captain,” said Maurice the mustanger and put the pistol to his head.

Oh God! He's headless!

It's a mirage! - exclaimed the captain."

I read the book from beginning to end, from end to beginning, and twice diagonally...