Colleagues

Vassily Aksyonov was born in Kazan, Russia on August 20, 1932. His parents were victims of the Stalin-era repressions. He was raised in an orphanage. He graduated from the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Medical Institute in 1956 and worked as a doctor for the next three years. His first stories were published in 1958 in the popular journal Yunost (Youth). His first novel, Colleagues, was published in 1961. In the 1970s, his work was kept from publication by Soviet censors. In 1979, he along with several others published the journal Metropol, which featured works that did not receive official permission to appear. He lived in the United States from 1980 to 2004 and taught Russian literature at several American universities including George Mason University and Goucher College. His works include A Ticket to the Stars, The Burn, Oranges from Morocco, The Island of Crimea, In Search of Melancholy Baby and Generations of Winter. He won the Russian Booker Prize in 2004 for his novel Voltairiens and Voltairiennes. He died on July 6, 2009 at the age of 76.

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