Orlando Figes - Overview

Overview

Figes is the son of the feminist writer Eva Figes. His sister is the author and editor Kate Figes. He attended William Ellis School in north London from 1971-78. He read History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with a rare double-starred First in 1982, and completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Fellow from 1984 to 1999. He was a Lecturer in History at the University of Cambridge from 1987 to 1999, before taking the Chair of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.

He is known for his works on Russian history, in particular A People's Tragedy (1996), Natasha's Dance (2002), The Whisperers (2007), "Crimea" (2010) and "Just Send Me Word" (2012). Figes uses a broad range of methodologies, including social, cultural and oral history, and his writing combines literary and academic qualities.

A People's Tragedy, which has been translated into twenty languages, is a study of the Russian Revolution, and combines social and political history with biographical details in a historical narrative. It was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, the WH Smith Literary Award, the NCR Book Award, the Longman-History Today Book Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Natasha's Dance won the Przeglad Wschodni Award for the best foreign book on East European History in Poland in 2009.

Natasha's Dance and The Whisperers were both short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, making Figes the only writer to have been short-listed twice for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The Whisperers was also short-listed for the Ondaatje Prize, the Prix Médicis, and the Premio Roma. Crimea: The Last Crusade, on the Crimean War of 1853-56, was published in 2010.

Figes serves on the editorial board of the journal Russian History.

His books have been translated into French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Estonian, Latvian, Slovenian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Georgian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

Figes also writes for the international press, broadcasts on television and radio, and reviews books for the New York Review of Books. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.