Vladimir Sorokin was born in a small town outside Moscow in 1955. He trained as an engineer but turned to art and writing, becoming a major presence in the Moscow underground of the 1980s. His work was banned in the Soviet Union, and his first novel, The Queue, was published in France in 1985. In 1992, Their Four Hearts was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize; in 1999, the publication of the controversial novel Blue Lard led to public demonstrations against the book; in 2001, Sorokin received the Andrei Bely Award for outstanding contributions to Russian literature; in 2013, The Blizzard was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. His most recent novel is Berlin Adenauerplatz. He lives in Berlin.
