Boris Akunin
Born in the small Georgian industrial town of Zestafoni in 1956 to a Georgian father and Russian-teacher mother, Akunin is an essayist, literary translator and a celebrated writer of detective fiction. After developing an interest in Japanese Kabuki theater, he joined the historical-philological branch of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University as an expert on Japan.
Zakhar Prilepin
Zakhar Prilepin was born near Ryazan in 1975. Prilepin had a varied life before dedicating himself to writing, spending time as a student, as a labourer, as a journalist and as a soldier, serving with the Special Forces in Chechnya. More recently Prilepin has come to the public attention not only as one of the best writers of his generation, but as a committed, and often controversial, political activist on behalf of the ‘Other Russia’ coalition. Prilepin lives in Nizhny Novgorod where he is the regional editor of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Alexander Kabakov
Alexander Kabakov was born in 1943 into a military family. He graduated from Dnepropetrovsk University and after serving in the army, worked as an engineer in a rocket development laboratory. In 1988 Kabakov wrote the dystopian novella No Return, which was translated and published widely throughout Europe, the USA and Japan. World press shared the opinion that ‘...for many people one of the biggest achievements of glasnost has been Alexander Kabakov's recognition as an author’ (The Guardian, UK).
