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Brostrom does a good job of representing this stern, intransigent yet oddly vulnerable writer to an anglophone reader, and of conveying his stylistic innovations. Part travelogue, part invective, part autobiography, part auto-hagiography (complete with miracles of healing), The Life Written by Himself fits no generic convention. -- Simon Franklin * Times Literary Supplement * [Brostrom's] translation is exceptionally well done, re-creating . . . the rhythms, stylistic alternations, and vernacular intonations of the original. -- Priscilla Hunt, <i>Slavic Review</i> Avvakum's combination of ecclesiastical and colloquial language transposed into writing the pathos of his oral rhetoric, and has remained a source of inspiration to modern Russian literature ever since the Life was published. -- Jostein Bortnes, <i>The Cambridge History of Russian Literature</i> The daring originality of Avvakum's venture cannot be overestimated, and the use he made of his Russian places him in the very first rank of Russian writers: no one has since excelled him in vigor and raciness and in the skillful command of all the expressive means of everyday language for the most striking literary effects. -- Prince Dmitry Svyatopolk Mirsky, <i>A History of Russian Literature</i> Reading The Life Written by Himself is like meeting a Dostoyevsky or Chekhov character come to life - but Avvakum was alive and kicking long before Russian literature could invent him. -- Robert Blaisdell * Russian Life * While even Russians struggle to read this story, written in an archaic language, English readers are lucky to be able to read it more easily in the beautiful translation by Kenneth N. Brostrom. -- Alexandra Guzeva * Russia Beyond *

The daring originality of Avvakum's venture cannot be overestimated, and the use he made of his Russian places him in the very first rank of Russian writers: no one has since excelled him in vigor and raciness and in the skillful command of all the expressive means of everyday language for the most striking literary effects. -- Prince Dmitry Svyatopolk Mirsky, <i>A History of Russian Literature</i> Avvakum's combination of ecclesiastical and colloquial language transposed into writing the pathos of his oral rhetoric, and has remained a source of inspiration to modern Russian literature ever since the Life was published. -- Jostein Bortnes, <i>The Cambridge History of Russian Literature</i> [Brostrom's] translation is exceptionally well done, recreating...the rhythms, stylistic alternations, and vernacular intonations of the original. -- Priscilla Hunt, <i>Slavic Review</i>

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Avvakum Petrovich (1620/1–1682) was born near Nizhny Novgorod to a priest and a nun. He became a leader in the Old Believers movement. He wrote the earliest version of his autobiography between 1669 and 1672 while imprisoned in Pustozersk, and was burned as a heretic in 1682. Kenneth N. Brostrom (1939–2020) was associate professor of Russian at Wayne State University.

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