DOVLATOV SERGEI (1941-1990), AUTOGRAPH Zona: zapiski nadziratelya [The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard’s Story]. Ann Arbor: Ermitazh, 1982.

128 pp., portrait; 21.5 x 14 cm. Photographic portrait of Sergei Dovlatov by Nina Alovert as frontispiece. Publisher’s printed wrapper. In good condition. Spine faded, light fading along the spine on the front wrapper, very small scratches. Author’s presentation inscription on the title page: ‘To dear Iraida - in friendship. S.D.’. Iraida Ivanovna Vandellos-Legkaya (1932-2020) was a Latvian-born Russian poet, translator, journalist and radio presenter. From 1963 to 1987 she worked for the ‘Voice of America’, as California and later New York correspondent of its Russian service. Dovlatov and Vandellos were in many ways colleagues: he was one of the founders and editor-in-chief of the newspaper ‘Novyy amerikanets’ (The New American) and also a presenter at ‘Radio Svoboda’, where he very likely conducted several interviews and conversations with Vandellos. First edition. Sergei Dovlatov’s autobiographical novella, made up of 14 self-contained episodes about the lives of prisoners and their guards. Sergei Dovlatov (1941-1990) was a Leningrad writer and journalist who never published a single book in his homeland during his lifetime but after his death became one of the most widely read Russian authors of the second half of the 20th century. Provenance: Iraida Ivanovna Vandellos-Legkaya (1932-2020).