author
V. V. (Vikentiĭ Vikentʹevich) Veresaev
1867–1945
A doctor as well as a writer, he brought unusual firsthand experience to Russian literature and became known for clear, honest prose about moral struggle, illness, war, and everyday life. He also helped introduce readers to the ancient world through widely praised translations of Homer.
1 Audiobook
Ilman tietä
by V. V. (Vikentiĭ Vikentʹevich) Veresaev
About the author
Born in Tula in 1867 as Vikenty Vikentyevich Smidovich, he wrote under the pen name Veresaev and built a rare double career as both a physician and an author. He studied history and philology at St. Petersburg University before training in medicine at the University of Dorpat, and his medical work gave him material that would shape some of his best-known writing.
Veresaev is especially remembered for works drawn from direct experience, including Memoirs of a Physician and later accounts connected with the Russo-Japanese War. His writing is often valued for its calm, observant style and for the way it asks difficult ethical questions without losing sight of ordinary human feeling.
Across a long career that stretched from late imperial Russia into the Soviet period, he also wrote criticism, memoir, and fiction, and became admired as a translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. He died in Moscow in 1945, leaving behind a body of work that joins literary craft with the sharpened attention of a practicing doctor.