Soviet dissident writer known for his irreverent and perceptive satire.

After serving in the Soviet army from 1951 to 1955 and attending the Moscow Pedagogical Institute (1957–59), Voynovich worked as a skilled labourer and then as an editor of radio programs. He published such well-received fiction as the short story “My zdes zhivyom” (1961; “We Live Here”) and the novellas Khochu byt chestnym (1963; “I Want to Be Honest”) and Dva tovarishcha (1964; “Two Comrades”), all of which concern pressures to conform to Soviet urban life. In 1974, after publishing a letter in defense of dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich), Voynovich was expelled from the Writers' Union of the U.S.S.R. and was forbidden to work as a professional writer. In 1980 he settled in West Germany. His Soviet citizenship was revoked in 1981 but was restored in 1990. In the 1980s he was a visiting writer at Princeton University and the University of Southern California.

Voynovich's best-known work is the acclaimed underground novel Zhizn i neobychaynyye priklyucheniya soldata Ivana Chonkina (1975; The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin), about a naive and unsophisticated man who battles the Soviet bureaucracy. The pseudoepic, autobiographical Ivankiada: ili rasskaz o vselenii pisatelya Voynovicha v novuyu kvartiru (1976; The Ivankiad: The Tale of the Writer Voynovich's Installation in His New Apartment) details his personal battles with the Soviet bureaucracy to obtain a two-room apartment. After he emigrated, he continued to write slyly humorous accounts of the vagaries of life under the Soviet system in works such as Pretendent na prestol: novye priklyucheniya soldata Ivana Chonkina (1979; Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin), Anti Sovetsky Sovetsky Soyuz (1985; The Anti-Soviet Soviet Union), Moskva 2042 (1987; Moscow 2042), and Shapka (1988; The Fur Hat). He also wrote film scripts and plays.