Oleg Pavlov
Biography
Oleg Pavlov is a prominent Russian writer and former winner of the Russian Booker Prize.
Born in Moscow in 1970, Pavlov spent his military service working as prison guard near the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Many of the incidents portrayed in his stories were inspired by his experiences there: he recalls how, while reading Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago he saw the very camp he had worked at, Karabas, mentioned and felt inspired to continue Solzhenitsyn’s work.
Pavlov’s service was cut short by a head injury, after which he spent months in hospital and then a psychiatric ward. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, A Military Tale, was published in Novyi mir and received positive attention not only from critics but from the jury for the Russian Booker Prize, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 award. Pavlov went on to win the Prize in 2002 for his book Funeral Rites in Karaganda, or, a Tale of Recent Times.
Pavlov is also the author of articles on literature, and the historical and social aspects of life in Russia. In his 2003 book The Russian in the Twentieth Century he meditates on Russian life, drawing not only from his own experience, but also from letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s, which the famous dissident writer and his wife Natalia entrusted to him.
Books /selected/
Асистолия / Asystole (2010)
Степная книга / Book of the Steppe (2008)
Повесть последних лет / A Tale of Recent Times (2001)
Казенная сказка / A Military Tale (1999)
Prizes and awards
2010 - Shortlisted for the Big Book Prize
2002 - The Russian Booker Prize
2002 - Shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize
2001 - Oktyabr Prize