Lev Danilkin
Biography
Lev Danilkin is the leading literary critic of his generation, credited with making criticism accessible and even glamorous, and is acknowledged, and feared, as the man who can make or break a book. His reviews in the popular cultural digest Afisha are noted for the breadth of their scope and the verve of their writing and are required reading for literate young Russians.
Born in Ukraine in 1974, Danilkin studied at Moscow State University in the early 1990s, at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. He has since worked as the editor-in-chief of Playboy and as the literary critic for the newspaper Vedomosti, as well as for Afisha. In addition to his prodigious journalistic output, Danilkin, a passionate advocate of foreign literature, has translated Julian Barnes’s Letters from London and is the author of a pioneering literary biography of the writer and politician Andrei Prokhanov, Man with an Egg, as well as a forthcoming biography of Yuri Gagarin.
Books
Круговые объезды по кишкам нищего / Circular Journeys in the Bowels of a Beggar: Collected Reviews (2007)
Человек с яйцом. Жизнь и мнения Александра Прохорова / Man with an Egg: The Life and Opinions of Alexander Prokhanov (2007)
Парфянская стрела / The Parthian Arrow (2006)
Prizes and awards
2010 - The Belkin Watcher From Afar Prize for literary critics
2008 - Shortlisted for the Big Book Prize
2008 - Shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize
2008 - Shortlisted for Bunin Prize