Tatiana Tolstaya
Genres
Contemporary Fiction, Literary Essays
Biography
Tatiana Tolstaya was born in Leningrad on 3 May 1951 into an aristocratic family with rich literary tradition. On her father's side, she is the great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy; her grandfather was the novelist Alexei Tolstoy and her grandmother was the poet Natalia Krandievskaya; her maternal grandfather, Mikhail Lozinsky, was a famous translator; Tatiana’s sister Natalia Tolstaya is also a writer, and her son, Artemy Lebedev, is the founder and owner of Art. Lebedev Studio, the first and best-known web design studio in Russia.
After completing a degree in Classics at Leningrad State University, Tolstaya moved to Moscow and worked for several years as a junior editor in the Eastern Literature Division of the publishing house Nauka. At the age of thirty-two, Tolstaya decided to become a full-time writer and began to contribute stories to Leningrad and Moscow journals. 'Peters', which was published in the prestigious literary journal Novyi mir in 1986, eventually opened doors for her in the literary scene. Originally entitled 'This Wonderful Life', this melancholic story told of a nearsighted librarian who loses his will to live life to the full after a disappointment in love. Once Tolstaya's first collection On the Golden Porch (1987) appeared in book kiosks, it sold out immediately. It was followed by Limpopo (1991), a collection of novellas which reflected the chaotic state of Russian society during the perestroika.
In contrast to the everyday reality she had portrayed in her short stories, Tolstaya's first novel, The Slynx (2000), was a dystopian fantasy showing a world ruled by ignorance. Tolstaya started to write the novel in 1986, in the beginning of the glasnost and perestroika programs, and finished it fourteen years later. In Russia the work was received with mixed reviews, but it sold well, and has been translated into English.
As an essayist she has written on literature and on current events in Russia and her journalistic articles have appeared in such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, New Republic, and the Guardian. In Russia Tolstaya has also co-hosted a popular TV show called 'The School for Scandal', in which she interviewed representatives of Russian culture and politics. Her yearly schedule is divided between the US, where she spends half of the year lecturing at a university, and Russia.
Prizes and awards
| 2001 | Shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize (The Slynx / Кысь) |
| 2001 | The Triumph Award (The Slynx / Кысь) |
| 1990 | The Grinzane Cavour Award, Italy (On the Golden Porch / На золотом крыльце сидели) |
Books
- The River / Река, 2007
- Women's Day / Женский день, 2006
- White Walls / Белые стены, 2004
- Not the Slynx / Не кысь, 2003
- The Circle / Круг, 2003
- Raisin / Изюм, 2002
- Day. Various. Co-written with Natalia Tolstaya / День. Разное., 2001
- Day. Private / День. Личное, 2001
- Night / Ночь, 2001
- Two. Co-written with Natalia Tolstaya / Двое, 2001
- The Slynx / Кысь, 2000
- Okkervil River / Река Оккервиль, 1999
- Sisters / Сёстры. Co-written with Natalia Tolstaya, 1998
- Love Me Love Me Not / Любишь - не любишь, 1997
- On the Golden Porch / На золотом крыльце сидели, 1988
Foreign Publications
In English
- The Slynx, 2007
- White Walls, 2007
- Pushkin's Children: Writings on Russia and Russians, 2003
- Sleepwalker in a Fog, 1992
- On the Golden Porch and other stories, 1989