This paper explores the aesthetics of Andrei Dittsel'’s Centaur v Satyr (2009), an experimental, quasi-autobiographical novel that treats the narrator’s life in Novosibirsk as a gay man, and in Hamburg as a Russian immigrant. I argue that Dittsel’’s work is queer not only in its subject matter, but also in its poetics, as Dittsel’’s wry narrative voice and his literary language constitute an approach to life-writing that is distinctively both Russian and queer. Dittsel'’s work both draws upon, and reinvents, the Russian literary language, particularly the work of the Symbolists. Yet my paper also places Dittsel' in a transnational dialogue with European and global traditions of queer writing, as a life story that crosses political and sexual boundaries and transgresses the conventions of autobiographical writing.
