The King Fish

In advance of Viktor Astafyev’s anniversary year Vita Nova Publishing House published one of his most significant works – a narration in stories The King Fish. The book is one of the Manuscripts series – a series dedicated to the books which had great difficulty in getting them published during Soviet times. Publishing of The King Fish was a painful issue for the author because of the harsh censorship. But in spite of the fact this literary work was vitiated it gained love of readers and was reissued many times. The new edition features uncensored version of the text.

The novel’s theme is people facing hard fate struggling to harness the forces of nature, as well as the destruction of nature resulting in the destruction of human personality.

The book is illustrated by an artist from St. Petersburg – Oleg Michailov, on commission from Vita Nova Publishing House. One of the reasons for the artistic interpretation of the text turned out to be very convincing is that the illustrations reflect Michailov’s impressions from visiting Siberia – Viktor Astayev’s birthplace.

Oleg Michailov was born in Leningrad in 1981. He studied in St. Petersburg Art Liceum named after B.V. Ioganson and graduated from St. Petersburg I.E.Repin State Academic Institute of Arts, Sculpture and Architecture where he finished postgraduate studies in 2007. He is a member of St.Petersburg Union of Artists. In 2009-2010 he worked at the St.Petersburg State Academy of Applied Arts and Design named after A.L.Stieglitz, the Department of Drawing.

His works are held in many museum and private collections in Russia as well as in private collections in the USA, United Kingdom, Romania, China, South Korea, and UAE. In 2010 Representative Office of Russian Federation President bought from the artist several landscape paintings which are now held in Gorki-9 residence. Oleg Michailov had many solo and collective exhibitions.

In April 2012 he had a trip to Polar regions. He performs projects in Taimyr Regional Studies Museum, regularly has workshops in children’s art school named after B.N.Moltchanov in Dudinka, Russia.

“I was lucky to see the places Viktor Astafyev described in his novel. Astafyev’s concise language and my own impressions were tumbling about in my brain. Several gigabytes of pictures and travel notes helped me to keep the impressions of this northern marathon. Afer coming back from the trip I was working on this material for hours trying to sort out images and characters reflecting Astafyev’s book –  people, northern nature, peculiar details of everyday life like hunting house interior with potbelly stove and petrol lamp or duralumin motor boat with an old motor.