Vladimir Sorokin was born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1955. His work was banned in the Soviet Union, and his first novel, The Queue, was published in France in 1985. In 1992, Sorokin’s Their Four Hearts was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize. In 1999, the publication of the controversial novel Blue Lard, which included a sex scene between Stalin and Khrushchev, led to public demonstrations against the book and demands that Sorokin be prosecuted as a pornographer. He has written numerous plays and short stories, including two volumes of stories forthcoming from NYRB Classics and one forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. He lives in Berlin.
*********************************************************************************
Max Lawton is a translator, novelist and musician. He has translated many books by Vladimir Sorokin and is also working with Jonathan Littell and Michael Lentz. Lawton is the author of one novel and a collection of stories currently awaiting publication and is writing his doctoral dissertation on phenomenology and the twentieth-century novel at Columbia University. He lives in Los Angeles.
