Addendum to a Photo Album (Russian Literature)

"Addendum to a Photo Album" is the saga of the births, deaths, and disappearances within the eccentric Mandrykin family. Following patriarch Malach, a Cossack captain, his wife Annushka, and his many sons all born with sideburns, the novel details their fraught relationships, particularly when sitting for family photographs. Vladislav Otroshenko's flowing sentences and rich metaphorical language describe characters whose concerns embrace the heroic, the metaphysical, and the mundane, as they fulfill their duties as Cossack warriors and family members. Otroshenko draws on his upbringing in Novocherkassk, a city on the Don River, creating a world and a book inhabited with absurdity, filial love, and unusual facial hair.

Vladislav Otroshenko is a Russian novelist, essayist, and a scriptwriter. Born in Novocherkassk, the old capital for the Don Cossacks Army Region, Otroshenko graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and is a member of Word Association of Writers PEN-Club.