Novels by A.A. Zinoviev as works of a new genre

The article analyzes the novels of A.A. Zinoviev from the perspective of genre specificity and artistic techniques that the author inherits from previous literature. Proximity to the artistic traditions of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and J. Swift’s texts allow us to consider Zinoviev’s texts in the context of world artistic culture, but the peculiarities of the organization of the novel space and the angle of the writer's point of view on social reality indicate that his novels do not fit into the usual genre canons and should be considered as sociological novels. The results obtained expand the traditional understanding of the genre of the novel, describe interesting author’s intentions of the world order, reveal the relationship between the artistic word and sociological statistical data, and give impetus to further research of the creative work of an extraordinary writer.