A Young Scoundrel

A Note on the Author

Eduard Limonov (real name: Eduard Savenko) was born and raised in Kharkov, an industrial city near the Russian-Ukrainian border. He attained success as an avant-garde poet in Moscow during the 1970's, and was expelled from the Soviet Union. Living as a penniless refugee in New York, he wrote his first memoir-novel, It's Me, Eddie (Eto Ya, Edichka), which described the Russian-exile experience as a degrading, frustrating struggle with the 'Literary mafia' of the bourgeois United States which led the hero to seek solace in various bizarre sexual escapades. The Russian emigres, usually depicted as noble victims, were scandalized by this version of themselves as decadent, hapless strivers, and Limonov gained a level of fame he had never enjoyed as poet. He has since produced many memoirs, of which the best is perhaps Memoir of A Russian Punk (Podrostok Savenko), which describes his adolescence as a small-time hood in Kharkov. A Young Scoundrel (Molodoi Niigodyaii) follows from that memoir, recounting the transformation of the young Limonov from proletarian tough-guy to avant-garde literary contender.