The Great Gopnik

A "gopnik" is a street thug: someone who doesn't follow any rules, but only believes in the law of the jungle. How could such a hooligan become the most powerful man in Russia? In his novel THE GREAT GOPNIK, Russian literary star Viktor Yerofeyev mirrors the life of Vladimir Putin, whom he got to know personally, with his own: on the one hand the "gopnik" who became the great dictator, on the other the free artist. Yerofeyev ventures nothing less than a literary explanation for what is happening in Russia today. THE GREAT GOPNIK reveals the mechanisms and peculiarities of Russian totalitarianism and is at the same time a fast-paced and ironic movement through time and space: while the writer, his wife, his parents, the opposition activist Boris Nemtsov and a good German discuss the seemingly insoluble questions over dinner - How could it have come to this? And how do we get out of it? - the Great Gopnik meets his great idol Stalin in the sauna. And what role does the seductive and mysterious Sister O. play? Viktor Jerofejew has written a play based on the novel exclusively for Theater Freiburg - a brilliant picaresque play.