Slavnikova
The author
Olga Slavnikova was born in 1957 to a family of aerospace engineers near Sverdlosk in the Urals, modern day Ekaterinburg. After finishing school she studied journalism and graduated from Ekaterinburg State University in 1981. Slavnikova began publishing fiction in the late 1980s (her first novel appeared in 1988), during which time she was also fiction editor, then managing editor, of the literary magazine ‘Urals'. Slavnikova has lived and worked in Moscow since 2001.
From the 1990s onwards Slavnikova has produced many acclaimed novels including ‘Стрекоза, увеличенная до размеров собаки' (‘Dragonfly the Size of a Dog'), ‘Один в зеркале' (‘Alone in the Mirror') and ‘Бессмертный' (‘Immortal'). She has received the Apollon Grigoriev Prize, the Polonsky Prize, the Bazhov Prize and, in 2007, for her novel ‘2017', the Russian Booker Prize.
Slavnikova also writes prolifically about contemporary literature and was pivotal in the establishment of the Debut Independent Literary Prize for young authors writing in Russian: each year the prize receives anything up to 50,000 entries.
The text
2017
Published in 2006, ‘2017' has been widely acclaimed. Its anti-utopian format allows Slavnikova to dip into the near future in order to survey the century which has elapsed since 1917. A beguiling mix of romance and realism, ‘2017' is enriched with the folklore of the Urals, the drama of mountaineering expeditions and the gruesome conventions of the gem industry.Click here or on the book cover for the pdf: