Evgeny Vodolazkin was born in Kiev in 1964. A scholarly expert in the old Russian literature, since 1990 Vodolazkin has worked in the department of the Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House. As a Professor Dmitry Likhachev’s pupil, Evgeny Vodolazkin has numerous academic published titles and articles to his name and has been awarded fellowships for research and lectureship in Germany from Toepfer Foundation and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Evgeny Vodolazkin is the bestselling and nationally awarded author of several novels and short stories and plays, including Laurus, translated into over 30 languages and staged as a play by many theaters in Russia. His novel The Aviator is now being made into a feature film. He is a winner of the Big Book Award and Yasnaya Polyana Prize in 2013, and was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize in 2013, the Booker Prize in 2013, the Big Book Award in 2010 and Andrei Bely Prize in 2009. Evgeny Vodolazkin lives with his family in St. Petersburg, Russia.