Viktor Astafyev, 77; Russian Novelist Used Rural Prose Style

Viktor Astafyev, 77, a controversial Russian novelist who was at the forefront of the rural prose style that emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, died Thursday at his home in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russian news media reported. Cause of death was thought to have been a stroke.

Astafyev was a native Siberian whose writing focused on ordinary country people who lived outside of Communist Party discipline. He was best known for the novels “The King Fish� and “The Damned and the Dead,� for which he was awarded the State Prize of Russia in 1975. He also wrote plays and film scripts.

Renowned Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn called Astafyev “an original Russian writer, a true lover of truth,� the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. He called Astafyev one of “the first who keenly told of the moral corruption of our life. As no one else, he felt the soldier’s weight of war and raised it from the depths. May he rest in peace.�