Sokolov is a Canadian citizen and has lived the larger part of his life in the United States and Canada.
During the Second World War, his father, Major Vsevolod Sokolov, worked as a military attaché at the Soviet embassy in Canada.
Only after she started a hunger strike in the Stephansdom in Vienna, Austria, in 1975, was Sokolov allowed to leave the Soviet Union.
His second, completely postmodern novel, Between Dog and Wolf, depends even more on the particularities of the Russian language, and it was deemed untranslatable for many years.
However, in late 2016, Between Dog and Wolf was translated into English by Alexander Boguslawski, a longtime friend of Mr. Sokolov, and was published by Columbia University Press.