Alexander Ilichevsky

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Alexander Ilichevsky

Alexander Ilichevsky was born in Sumgait, Azerbaijan in 1970 and graduated from a technological institute affiliated to Moscow University in theoretical physics. He worked in scientific research in Israel and California from 1991 to 1998, whereupon he returned to live in Moscow with his family. He is the prolific author of many literary works in various genres, both poetry and prose, all of which have been published in Russia’s most prestigious literary journals, such as Novyi mir (New World), Oktiabr (October) – all to great literary acclaim. His novel Matisse, dedicated to all those born in 1970, like the author himself, won him the Russian Booker Prize in 2007 – one of a record seventy-eight works submitted for consideration for the prize that year. This outstanding achievement is not only testament to Ilichevsky’s great talent as a writer, but also to the fact that Russian literature is alive and flourishing today, perhaps as never before.