In 1992 Mark Kharitonov was awarded the first Booker Russian Novel Prize for his novel, Linii sud'by, ili Sunduchok Milashevicha (1994; translated as Lines of Fate, 1996). He had made his literary debut many years earlier, in 1976, but subsequently was banned from print until 1988. Since the period of glasnost he has published several volumes of fiction and essays and established himself as one of the most important Russian writers of the late twentieth century. Translations of his selected works have appeared in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, and the United States.

Mark Sergeevich Kharitonov was born on 31 August 1937 in the Ukrainian town of Zhitomir, where his mother, Faina Lamberg--driven from Moscow in fear of the purges by Joseph Stalin--had moved to give birth. Both of Kharitonov's parents came from Jewish families who lived near the town of Vinnitsa in Ukraine. His father, Sergei, moved to Moscow in...