The life and extraordinary adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin

Blurb

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin is a 1969-1975 novel by Soviet dissident writer Vladimir Voinovich. Voinovich wrote two sequels to the novel Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, 1979, and Displaced Person, 2007; together, the trilogy constitutes Voinovich's magnum opus.
The first book is set in the Red Army during World War II, satirically exposing the daily absurdities of the totalitarian Soviet regime. It was rejected by Novy Mir, circulated by samizdat, and first printed by an emigre magazine in West Germany, allegedly without author's consent, after which Voinovich was banned from publishing his books in the Soviet Union.
Ivan Chonkin, a combination of a Russian folk hero Ivan the Fool and the "Good Soldier" Švejk, is now a widely known figure in Russian popular culture.