Oleg Pavlov
Genres
Contemporary Fiction, Biography
Biography
Oleg Pavlov is a prominent Russian writer and former winner of the Russian Booker Prize. Born in Moscow in 1970, Pavlov spent his military service working as prison guard near the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Many of the incidents portrayed in his stories were inspired by his experiences there: he recalls how, while reading Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago he saw the very camp he had worked at, Karabas, mentioned and felt inspired to continue Solzhenitsyn’s work.
Pavlov’s service was cut short by a head injury, after which he spent months in hospital and then a psychiatric ward. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, A Military Tale, was published in Novyi mir and received positive attention not only from critics but from the jury for the Russian Booker Prize, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 award. Pavlov went on to win the Prize in 2002 for his book Funeral Rites in Karaganda, or, a Tale of Recent Times.
Pavlov is also the author of articles on literature, and the historical and social aspects of life in Russia. In his 2003 book The Russian in the Twentieth Century he meditates on Russian life, drawing not only from his own experience, but also from letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s, which the famous dissident writer and his wife Natalia entrusted to him.
Prizes and awards
| 2010 | Longlisted for the Russian Booker Prize (Asystole / Асистолия) |
| 2010 | Znamya Magazine Prize (Asystole / Асистолия) |
| 2002 | Russian Booker Prize (Commemoration in Karaganda / Карагандинские девятины, или Повесть последних дней) |
| 2001 | October Magazine Literary Prize (Commemoration in Karaganda / Карагандинские девятины, или Повесть последних дней) |
| 1997 | Longlisted for the Russian Booker Prize (Matushin's Case / Дело Матюшина) |
| 1997 | October Magazine Literary Prize (Matushin's Case / Дело Матюшина) |
| 1995 | Noviy Mir Literary Prize (Military Tale / Казенная сказка) |
| 1994 | Shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize (Military Tale / Казенная сказка) |
Books
- Asystole, 2010
- In ungodly alleys, 2007
- Anticritisism, Knizhny Mir, 2005
- The Russian in the XX century, 2003
- Commemoration in Karaganda, 2001
- Military Tale, 1999
- Book of Steppe, 1998