ALEXANDER KHURGIN was born in 1952 in Moscow. In 1974 he graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Mining Institute and worked for 19 years as a mining engineer. His literary debut was in 1977, as a writer-humorist. Since 1989, when Ogonyok published three of his stories, he has focused on what might be called "serious prose." His works have been published in the leading "thick journals" Znamya, Druzhba Narodov, Oktyabr, Novy Mir. His books include The Superfluous Dozen ("Lishnyaya desyatka", 1991), What Nonsense ("Kakaya-to erunda", 1995), The Country of Australia ("Strana Avstraliya", 1997), Lawrence's Comet ("Kometa Lorentsa", 1999), The Return of Desires ("Vozvrashchenie zhelaniy", 2000), Night Cowboy ("Nochnoy kovboy", 2001) and Endless Chicken ("Beskonechnaya kuritsa", 2002). Lawrence's Comet and The Country of Australia were both nominated for the Booker Prize, and Lawrence's Comet received the prize of the International Literary Fund. Literary critic Andrei Nemzer included The Country of Australia among the 30 best works of Russian literature of the 1990s. He now lives in Germany.
EDUARD LIMONOV (pen name for Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko) was born in Dzerzhinsk, in 1943, into the family of a military officer. In 1967 he moved to Moscow, where he became part of the literary group Konkret. In 1968 a samizdat collection of his poems, Kropotkin and Other Poems ("Kropotkin i drugiye stikhotvoreniya"), was published. In 1974, he emigrated to New York, worked in over a dozen jobs, including as a mover, a waiter and a servant. Beginning in 1979, he became a professional writer with the publication of his scandalous book, It's Me, Eddie ("Eto ya - Edichka"), and a collection of poems Russian ("Russkoye"). In 1980, having ruined his relations with every sector of the Russian emigration, he left New York to live in Paris where, in 1987, he received French citizenship, joined the editorial board of the newspaper L'ldiot International and was published in the extreme right wing publication Shock du Moi. He moved back to Russia in 1992 and created the National Bolshevik Party, unifying leftist radicals. His provocative and largely autobiographical works include The Executioner ("Palach", 1986) and Murder of a Sentinel ("Ubiystvo chasovovo", 1993). His articles and essays are published regularly in the newspaper of the NBP, Limonka. Over time, the writer has moved away from literary work to spend most of his time in politics and journalism. In 2001 he was convicted of weapons possession and creation of illegal armed groups and sentenced to four years. While in prison, he wrote Imprisoned by Dead Men ("V plenu u mertvetsov"), Russian Psycho ("Russkoye psikho") and The Holy Monsters ("Svyashchenniye monstry"). In June 2003, Limonov was granted early release and returned to politics and journalism.
DMITRY LIPSKEROV was born in Moscow in 1964. He graduated from the Shchukin Theater School in 1985. In 1989, Oleg Tabakov's Studio Theater performed Lipskerov's play, River on Asphalt ("Reka na asfalte"). In 1990, Mark Zakharov's Lenkom staged his School for Emigrants ("Shkola dlya emigrantov"). In 1996, he published his first novel, 40 Years of Chanchghoe ("Sorok let Chanchzhoe"), in the journal Novy Mir. It was later published in book form by Vagrius and made it onto the shortlist for the Russian Booker prize (all of his eight subsequent publications have received nominations for the Russian Booker). In 1998, Lipskerov, together with State Duma Deputy Andrei Skoch, established the independent literary prize Debut. He lives in Moscow and also is a successful restaurant owner.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO was born in 1968, in Kazakhstan. One of Russia's leading science fiction writers of the 20th and early 21st century, he graduated from the Alma-Ata State Medical Institute and began working as a psychiatric doctor while working as deputy editor of the fantasy journal Worlds ("Miry"), published in Alma-Ata. His first published story, The Violation ("Narushenie"), appeared in in the journal Zarya (Alma-Ata, 1987). He became widely known with the 1992 publication of his novella Knights of the 40 Islands ("Rytsari Soroka Ostrovov") and has been a professional author since 1993. He has received numerous prizes for his work and has authored over two dozen books, many of them part of multi-volume tales. His most famous work is the Nightwatch series (five books), which has recently been turned into a film trilogy. Several of his other works have been adapted for film, but mainly just the Nightwatch books have been translated into English.
VLADIMIR MAKANIN was born in 1937, in Orsk. He graduated from Moscow State University with a mathematics degree and taught at the university level while also taking courses in screenwriting and directing. In 1965, he published his first novel, Straight Line ("Pryamaya linia"), and the second, Fatherlessness ("Bezotsovshchina") followed in 1971. Over the two decades that followed, he produced a new novel almost every year, in many instances collections of new and previously published works. In 1985 he became a member of the Board of Directors of the USSR Union of Writers, and in 1987 joined the editorial board of the prestigious literary journal Znamya. Since the early 1980s, Makanin has increasingly employed folkloric and mystical motifs in his works, e.g. Ancestor ("Predtecha", 1982) and Loss ("Utrata", 1987). The author of over 20 books, he is a recipient of the Booker Prize (1992) for Baize-Covered Table with Decanter ("Stol, pokryty syknom i s grafinom poseredine"), the Pushkin Prize, awards from the journals Novy Mir and Znamya, and the State Prize of the Russian Federation. One of his most famous recent novels is Underground, or A Hero for Our Times ("Andergraund, ili Geroy nashevo vremeni", 1999).
MARINA MOSKVINA was born in 1954, in Moscow. After graduating from the journalism faculty at Moscow State University, she worked for Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper and in the Progress Publishing House. She began by writing books for children and then teens. Her novel My Dog Loves Jazz ("Moya sobaka lyubit dzhaz", 1997) was awarded the Andersen International Gold Medal. She has also written several travelogues recounting her travels through the Himalayas, Japan and Nepal. Her first novel for adults was The Genie of Unrequited Love ("Geniy bezotvetnoy lyubvi", 2000). The novel extracted in this volume was published in 2005. For over a decade she has hosted a radio program Together with Marina Moskvina and has led master classes in developing one's creative potential and study of the art of letter writing at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
VICTOR PELEVIN was born in Moscow in 1962. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Energetics with a specialty in electromechanics, served in the army and finished a course of study at the Literary Institute. For a few years, he worked at the journal Science and Religion ("Nauka i religiya"), preparing publications on eastern mysticism. His first published work was The Sorcerer Ignat and People ("Koldun Ignat i lyudi", 1989), and his first novel was Omon Ra (1992). He has written some eight novels and dozens of stories and tales, and his works have been translated into every major world language. A French magazine included Pelevin in one of the world's 1000 most significant figures in world culture (the only other Russian included was film director Alexander Sokurov).
LUDMILA PETRUSHEVSKAYA was born in 1938 in Moscow, into the family of a Moscow State University (MGU) professor. She graduated from MGU and began writing stories in the mid-1960s. In 1972 she began to work as an editor at the Central Television Studio, and two of her short stories were published in the journal Aurora. In the mid-1970s, Petrushevskaya got her start as a dramatist. In 1977, Roman Viktyuk staged her play Music Lessons ("Uroki muzyki"). In 1979, her one-act play, Love ("Lyubov"), was published in the journal Teatr and, during the 1981-82 season, was included in a production of three short plays at Yuri Lyubimov's Taganka Theater. In 1983, her plays A Glass of Water ("Stakan vody") and Music Lessons were staged in Moscow, and Mark Zakharov produced Three Girls in Blue ("Tri devushki v golubom") at Lenkom. Petrushevskaya gained wide notoriety with her play The Columbine's Apartment ("Kvartira Kolombiny", 1985), staged at the Sovremmenik Theater. Petrushevskaya's first collection of prose, Immortal Love ("Bessmertnaya lyubov") was published in 1987. She was shortlisted for the first Russian Booker Prize and in 1991 received the German Pushkin Prize.
ZAHAR PRILEPIN (pen name for Yevgeny Lavlinsky) was born in 1975, in the village of Ilyinka, Ryazan oblast. He graduated from the philology department of Nizhegorodsky University, served in the OMON as a squad co
mmander and saw action in Chechnya (1996 and 1999). His poetry began to be published in 2003. His novel Pathology ("Patologii", 2004), about the war in Chechnya, received great critical and public acclaim, and was followed in 2006 by his second novel, Sanka, the story of a simple provincial boy who joins a young revolutionaries' party. His novel in stories Sin ("Grekh", 2007) received the National Bestseller prize and Sanka received the Yasnaya Polyana literary prize, in the category "21st Century." A member of the Nizhny Novgorod division of the National Bolshevik Party, he has taken part in dozens of leftist radical political demonstrations. He is presently editor of the regional analytical portal Agency for Political News Nizhny Novgorod. He has been a recipient of the Boris Sokolov Prize (2004) and the prize of the newspaper Literary Russia (2004).
DINA RUBINA was born in Tashkent in 1953. She graduated from the Tashkent Conservatory and taught in the Institute of Culture in Tashkent. She lived for a time in Moscow before emigrating to Israel in 1990. Her first literary works were published in the journal Youth ("Yunost"). A recipient of the Aryeh Dulchin literary prize (for her book Duplicate Family, "Dvoynaya familiya", 1990) and the Israeli Union of Writers prize (for her book, One Intellectual Sat Down in the Road, "Odin intelligent uselsya na doroge", 1995). Duplicate Family was translated into French and published in 1996 by the ACTES SUD publishing house (Paris, Nice), and received a prestigious award from French booksellers as the best book of the season. Rubina's works have twice been nominated for the Booker Prize and she is a recipient (2007) of the Great Book prize, for her novel On the Sunny Side of the Street ("Na solnechnoy storone ulitsy"). She has a son from her first marriage and a daughter from her second.
DUNYA SMIRNOVA was born in 1969 in Moscow. She is the daughter of the famous film director and actor Andrei Smirnov, and the granddaughter of the Soviet writer Sergei Smirnov. She studied at Moscow State University, in the department of philology, and worked as a journalist at Kommersant and as a book reviewer for Afisha. She has written scripts for the documentaries Butterfly Stroke ("Baterflyay"), The Last Hero ("Posledny geroy") as well as for the fiction films Giselle's Mania ("Maniya Zhizeli", 1995), His Wife's Diary ("Dnevnik evo zheny", 2000), and A Stroll ("Progulka", 2003), all directed by Alexei Uchitel, whom she has collaborated with since 1995. Her screenplay for His Wife's Diary received second prize in the Harley-Merrill International Screening Competition. Together with Tatyana Tolstaya, Smirnova presents the Culture TV program School for Scandal ("Shkola slosloviya"). She lives with her husband and son in St. Petersburg.
VLADIMIR SOROKIN was born in the town of Bykovo, near Moscow, in 1955. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas and for several years earned his living drawing illustrations for books by other authors. He gained his first literary experiences in the early 1970s. His works are vivid examples of the underground culture and thus could not be published in his homeland during the Soviet era. In 1985 the Parisian journal A-Ya published a collection of six of his stories. That same year his novel The Queue ("Ochered") was also published. In 1989 Russian Grandmother ("Russkaya babushka") was published in Germany. That year, his works also began to be published in the USSR. Sorokin's works, in particular his novels The Queue, Marina's Thirtieth Love ("Tridtsataya lyubov Mariny", 1987), The Norm ("Norma", 1994) are consistently countercultural in style and contain shocking naturalistic scenes that parody the literature of Socialist Realism. His books have been translated into at least 10 languages.
VLADIMIR VOINOVICH was born in Dushanbe. In May of 1941, he and his father moved to Zaporozhe, and then came the war, evacuation and continued relocations throughout the USSR. He worked as a shepherd, a carpenter, a fitter, an airline mechanic, a rural instructor, and a national radio editor. He served in the army from 1951-1955, during which time he began to write poems, then shifted to prose. In 1962 he was admitted to the USSR Union of Writers. Beginning in 1966, he participated in a human rights movement. Because of this, and because of his unfavorable portrayal of Soviet reality in his novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin ("Zhizn i neobychaynye priklyucheniya soldata Ivana Chonkina"), he was subjected to persecution. In 1974 he was expelled from the Union of Writers, and in 1980, under pressure from the Powers that Be, was forced to emigrate. In 1981, by a decree of Leonid Brezhnev, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship, only to have it returned 10 years later by the pen of Mikhail Gorbachev. While in emigration, he lived in Germany and the US, where, aside from Chonkin, he had several works published, including By Means of Mutual Correspondence ("Putyom vzaimnoy perepiski"), Ivankiada, Shapka, Moscow 2042, The Anti-Soviet Soviet Union ("Antisovetsky Sovetsky Soyuz"), the plays Tribunal and Fictitious Marriage ("Fiktivny brak"), as well as numerous stories, poems and essays. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
VICTOR YEROFEYEV was born in Moscow, in 1947, into the family of a diplomat. During his childhood, he lived for a few years in Paris. In 1970, he graduated from the department of philology at Moscow State University, and in 1973 completed his graduate studies in world literature. He gained notoriety for his 1973 essay on the Marquis de Sade, published in the journal Questions of Literature ("Voprosy literatury"). In 1975, he defended his dissertation, Dostoyevsky and French Existentialism. In 1979 he was expelled from the Union of Writers for helping to organize the samizdat almanac Metropol, and was not published in the Soviet Union again until 1988. Since its publication in 1989, his essay A Funeral Feast for Soviet Literature ("Pominki po sovetskoy literature") has been the subject of sharp debate. In 1990, his novel Russian Beauty ("Russkaya krasavitsa") was published an international bestseller which has been translated into more than 20 languages His story, Life With an Idiot ("Zhizn s idiotom"), was the basis for a 1992 opera by composer Alfred Shnitke and a 1993 film by director Alexander Rogozhkin. In addition to Russian Beauty, he has published (in Russia, Europe and the US, where he often travels to lecture) books of stories, a collection of literary-philosophical essays, In the Labyrinth of Cursed Questions ("V labirinte proklyatykh voprosov"), and the novel "he Last Judgement ("Strashny sud", 1996). Other books include Russian Flowers of Evil ("Russkiy svety zla"), Men ("Muzhchiny") and Five Rivers of Life ("Pyat rek zhizni"). In 1994-1996, the Collected Works of Viktor Yerofeyev was published in three volumes.
LEONID YUZEFOVICH was born in 1947 in Moscow, into a family of white-collar workers. In 1970 he graduated from Perm University and worked as a middle school history teacher. He did scholarly research and became a Candidate in Historical Sciences. He began to be published in 1977, debuting with the story Engaged with Liberty ("Obruchenie s volnostyu"), published in the journal Ural. He achieved fame as a writer with his novels about the head of the St. Petersburg investigative police, Ivan Dmitriyevich Putilin (1830-1893) The Harlequin's Costume ("Kostyum Arlekina"), Meeting House ("Dom svidaniy") and Prince of the Wind ("Knyaz vetra"), which received the 2001 National Bestseller prize. In 2002 he published the historical detective novel Kazarova, which concerns the 1920 investigation of the death of the eponymous singer and actress. The following year saw the release of Sand Riders ("Peschanye vsadniki"), based on one of the legends of the notorious Baron Ungern von Sternberg. A frequent writer for the journals Znamya and Druzhba Narodov, he also publishes reviews in the journal Novy Mir.
Translators
ALEXEI BAYER was born in Russia but has lived in New York since 1974, where he is an independent economist and writer. Over the years, his fiction has appeared in various U.S. literary journals, including in KR Online, a Kenyon Review web project. He translated several of Andrei Gelasimov's stories into English. His own collection, Eurotrash (OGI, Moscow, 2004), was translated into Russian by Gelasimov.
MICHELE A. BERDY is a Moscow-based translator and writer. In addition to translating non-fiction, fiction and films, she writes a weekly column on language and translation for The Moscow Times. Her book reviews and articles on culture, current events and various aspects of intercultural communication have appeared in the Ru
ssian and English-language press. She has written or co-authored four guidebooks about Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia, as well as a Russian-English dictionary.
LIV BLISS began her translation career in Moscow, with Progress Publishers and Novosti Press Agency, in the late 1970s and has been a happy freelance translator, editor, and language consultant ever since. She has an American Translators Association certification in Russian to English translation, and is on the editorial board of SlavFile, the ATA's Slavic Languages Division newsletter. She lives in the White Mountains of Arizona with her husband, Jim, and an assortment of far wilder creatures. Her translation of Godsdoom; the Book of Hagen, by Nick Perumov, was published by Zumaya Publications in 2007.
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