Tatyana Tolstaya - Life and Work

Life and Work

Tolstaya received her education at the department of classical philology of the Leningrad State University. She moved to Moscow in the early 1980s and started working in the Nauka publishing house. Her first short story, "On a Golden Porch" (На златом крыльце сидели), appeared in Avrora magazine in 1983 and marked the start of Tolstaya's literary career.

Tolstaya's novel The Slynx/Kys (Кысь, 2000) is a dystopian novel filled with literary allusions. Several collections of short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya are popular all over Russia, and she is regarded by many as one of the foremost writers of today.

Tatyana Tolstaya is the co-host of a very successful Russian TV show The School of Slander (Школа злословия), where she interviews 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.

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