BIBLIOTOPIA 2021 | Sasha Filipenko and Maxim Osipov in conversation (RU)

Chronicling Post-Soviet Society

Sasha Filipenko is a Belarusian writer and journalist, born in 1984 in Minsk. He studied literature in St. Petersburg and worked as a journalist, screenwriter and author for a satirical television show. He writes in Russian. A regular contributor to literary magazines, he has written five novels, exploring the violence of post-Soviet Russia, the machine of terror, and the effect it has on citizens. His work is translated in a dozen languages. « La traque » , his latest novel, (Éditions des Syrtes, 2020) describes the hounding of a journalist who has been investigating a politician. « Red Crosses », his previous novel, which explores memories of Soviet system, will be published in English in 2021 by Europa Editions. Sasha Filipenko has been awarded many prizes, including the Russian Prize (2014), the « Znamya » magazine Prize (2014), and the SNOB Prize, and was short-listed for top literary prizes such as the Bolshaya Kniga and the Russian Booker.  

Maxim Osipov, born in 1963 in Moscow, is a cardiologist, social activist, and writer of short fiction. After completing his medical studies he worked at the University of California in San Francisco, before he returned to Moscow, where he founded a publishing house devoted to scientific works in Russian, and ran it for 15 years. He has won a number of prizes, including the « Znamya » magazine Prize, Bunin Prize, and Yury Kazakov Prize, and his plays have been staged across Russia. In 2005 while working at Tarusa’s local hospital, he founded a charitable fund to ensure its survival. His literary works have been translated into twenty languages, and a selection of his stories, « Rock, Paper, Scissors », came out in English from NYRB Classics in 2019. Osipov’s fiction presents a nuanced portrait of life in post-Soviet provincial Russia, its tragedies, frustrations, and moments of humble beauty and inspiration.

Le Fondation Jan Michalski, le 5 juin 2021