The author of widely acclaimed novels, Shishkin is admired as a refined stylist whose fiction engages Russian and European literary traditions and forges an equally expansive vision for the future of literature. Born January 18, 1961 in Moscow, Shishkin worked as a school teacher and journalist. His writing debut in 1993, the short story Calligraphy Lesson, was named Best Debut of the Year by the literary journal Znamya.

Dina Rubina is one of the most widely-read Russian authors alive today. She was born in 1953, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she later studied music at the Tashkent Conservatory. At sixteen her first short story appeared in the journal Iunost’, which continued to publish her work until the end of the Soviet Union. Life in the colourful environment of Tashkent was not always easy: Rubina had to turn to writing for stage and screen and finally moved to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

Leicester Square Theatre
9 & 16 March
£12/£10
‘A Sense of Delicacy’, one of Chekhov’s best comic stories, comes to the London stage, performed by the Romanian actor Mihai Arsene. Actor Mihai Arsene was born in Pitesti, Romania. He studied Performing Arts at the University of Craiova, where he graduated in 2001. Just before graduation, he was awarded The Best Actor Award for the role Mr. Bogoiu in "The Holiday Game" by Mihail Sebastian, which was part of the Student Actor Festival in Iasi, Romania.

Dina Rubina was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1953, studied music in the Tashkent Conservatory, moved to Moscow in the mid-1980s, and then to Israel in 1990. She returned to Russia for three years at the turn of the 21st century as Israel's cultural liaison, and now resides in a suburb of Jerusalem. Rubina is one of the most widely read Russian writers of today. Her recent novel, On the Sunny Side of the Street (Na solnechnoi storone ulitsy), won first place in Russia's Radio Booker Literary Award (2007), third place in the Big Book Literary Prize (2007), and was short-listed for the Russian Booker (2006). Her dozens of other books include the novels The Syndicate (Syndikat, 2004) and Here Comes the Messiah! (Vot idet Messiya!, 1996), and the collection On Upper Maslovka (Na Verkhnei Maslovke, 2001). Her newest novel is Leonardo's Handwriting (Pocherk Leonardo, 2008). Her work has won awards in Uzbekistan, Israel, and France, and has been translated into 12 languages. Her novel, Here Comes the Messiah!, is available in English translation by Daniel M. Jaffe, as are several of her shorter pieces.

Mikhail Shishkin was born in 1961 and grew up in Moscow. He studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute where he trained as a teacher. Following his graduation in 1982, Shishkin worked as a journalist at ‘Rovesnik’ and then, between 1985 and 1995, as a teacher of English and German. In 1995 he moved to Switzerland and he lives in Zurich to this day. Buoyed by Shishkin’s sophisticated language and phrases of unique melody, predictable comparisons have been made to that other writer of extraordinary linguistic versatility, Vladimir Nabokov. Though he understands himself as within a tradition of Russian writers in exile, for Shishkin, the question ‘to return or not to return to Russia’ simply does not exist. He asserts that ‘for a better understanding of the self one should live everywhere’.

by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Translated by Hugh Aplin
Hesperus Press, 2008, pp. 218
The citizens of the One State live in a condition of 'mathematically infallible happiness'. D-503 decides to keep a diary of his days working for the collective good in this clean, blue city state where nature, privacy and individual liberty have been eradicated. But over the course of his journal D-503 suddenly finds himself caught up in unthinkable and illegal activities - love and rebellion. Banned on its publication in Russia in1921, We is the first modern dystopian novel and a satire on state control that has once again become chillingly relevant.

by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Translated by Natasha Randall
Vintage Classics; 2007; pp. 203
The citizens of the One State live in a condition of 'mathematically infallible happiness'. D-503 decides to keep a diary of his days working for the collective good in this clean, blue city state where nature, privacy and individual liberty have been eradicated