Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, rea…
Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor, who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as th…
Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی) is an Iranian American writer and scholar of English literature whose work explores the political and imaginative power of books. Born in Tehran, she grew up in a fami…
Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramovic has pioneered performance as a visual art form, creating some of the most important early works. The body has alw…
Mikael Niemi is a Swedish author. He wrote the novel Populärmusik från Vittula (in English as Popular music from Vittula). It became a best-seller in Sweden and was subsequently translated into 30 lan…
Vladimir Sorokin (Владимир Сорокин, Vlagyimir Szorokin) was born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1955. He trained as an engineer at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas, but turned to art and writ…
Elif Batuman is an American author, academic, and journalist. Born in New York City to Turkish parents, she grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard College and received her doctorate in comp…
Sergei Dovlatov (Russian: Сергей Довлатов) was born in Ufa, Bashkiria (U.S.S.R.), in 1941. He dropped out of the University of Leningrad after two years and was drafted into the army, serving as a gua…
People consider that Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь) founded realism in Russian literature. His works include The Overcoat (1842) and Dead Souls (1842).
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of “The Sympathizer,” awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His most recent book, “To Save and to Destroy,” explores…
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scie…
The brothers Arkady Strugatsky [Russian: Аркадий Стругацкий] and Boris Strugatsky [Russian: Борис Стругацкий] were Soviet-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers…
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. One of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, it was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Joy…
Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston, was a Russian aristocrat, a prince and count, best known for participating in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin.
Victor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian fiction writer. His books usually carry the outward conventions of the science fiction genre, but are used to construct involved, multi-layered postmodernist text…
Benjamin Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He spent his childhood in The Hague and Buenos Aires and when he was twelve years old he moved to Santiago de Chile, where he lives today.
Marina Stepnova (Марина Степнова) now lives in Moscow but was raised in Kishinev. She graduated from The Gorky Literary Institute and did postgraduate studies at the Institute of World Literature. Ste…
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный) was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He came to international prominence by organizing anti-gove…
Guzel Yakhina is a Russian author and screenwriter. She is a winner of the Big Book literary prize and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award. Guzel Shamilevna Yakhina was born in Kazan. Her mother is a do…
Ayşegül Savaş grew up in London, Copenhagen, and Istanbul. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta, among others. She lives in Paris.
