Lev Danilkin
Genres
Biography, Literary Criticism
Biography
Lev Danilkin is the leading literary critic of his generation, credited with making criticism accessible and even glamorous, and is acknowledged, and feared, as the man who can make or break a book. His reviews in the popular cultural digest Afisha are noted for the breadth of their scope and the verve of their writing and are required reading for literate young Russians.
Born in Ukraine in 1974, Danilkin studied at Moscow State University in the early 1990s, at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. He has since worked as the editor-in-chief of Playboy and as the literary critic for the newspaper Vedomosti, as well as for Afisha. In addition to his prodigious journalistic output, Danilkin, a passionate advocate of foreign literature, has translated Julian Barnes’s Letters from London and is the author of a pioneering literary biography of the writer and politician Andrei Prokhanov, Man with an Egg, as well as a forthcoming biography of Yuri Gagarin.
Prizes and awards
| 2010 | The Belkin Watcher From Afar Prize for literary critics |
| 2008 | Shortlisted for the Big Book Prize, Man with an Egg: The Life and Opinions of Alexander Prokhanov / Человек с яйцом: жизнь и мнения Александра Прохорова |
| 2008 | Shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize, Man with an Egg: The Life and Opinions of Alexander Prokhanov / Человек с яйцом: жизнь и мнения Александра Прохорова |
| 2008 | Shortlisted for the Bunin Prize, Numbered from the End: A Guide to Russian Literature / Нумерация с хвоста: Путеводитель по русской литературе |
Books
- Gagarin: Man and Myth, 2011
- Circular Journeys in the Bowels of a Beggar: Collected Reviews / Круговые объезды по кишкам нищего, 2007
- Man with an Egg: The Life and Opinions of Alexander Prokhanov / Человек с яйцом. Жизнь и мнения Александра Прохорова, Ad Marginem, 2007
- The Parthian Arrow / Парфянская стрела, Amfora, 2006