Aleksandr Ilichevsky was born in Sumgayit, near Baku, in 1970. A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, he worked in research in Israel and the United States from 1991 to 1998, and has lived in Moscow since 1998. Ilichevsky's published prose works include Klein's Bottle (Butyl'ka Kleina, 2005), and the novel Matisse (2007). ‘The Sparrow', which is included in Klein's Bottle and received the prestigious Yury Kazakov short story prize in 2005, is devoted to the famine which followed the introduction of grain requisitioning by the Soviet government in 1932 and which is thought to have killed some five million peasants. Matisse, by contrast, gives a panoramic picture of Moscow and Russia in the 1990s, taking as its protagonists two vagrants and a physicist who decides to join their number. Despite puzzling many readers and critics with its title, it was awarded the Russian Booker Prize in 2007.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION
This special issue is devoted to the Rossica Translation Prize, awarded in 2007 for the second time

FOUND IN TRANSLATION
This special issue is devoted to the Rossica Translation Prize, awarded in 2007 for the second time