Vasily Aksyonov

Soviet and Russian avant garde writer known in the West as the author of the novels The Burn ("Ожог, Ozhog," 1975), and Generations of Winter ("Московская сага, Moskovskaya Saga," 1992), a family saga following three generations of the Gradov family between 1925 and 1953. He also wrote plays and poems, the latter occasionally performed as songs.

His Communist parents survived nearly two decades in the Gulag and in exile. Aksyonov was raised in Kazan by his nanny and grandmother until the NKVD arrested him as a son of "enemies of the people", and sent him to an orphanage. He was rescued in 1938 by his uncle, with whose family he stayed until his mother was released into exile after serving a decade in forced labour. In 1947, Vasily joined her in exile in the notorious Magadan, Kolyma prison area, where he graduated from high school.

Aksyonov attended Kazan University, graduated in 1956 from the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg, then worked as a doctor for three years.

His first novel, Colleagues (1961), was based on his experiences as a doctor. He published 25 more novels from 1961 to 2007.

After The Burn was published in Italy in 1980, Aksyonov and his wife accepted an invitated to move to the USA. He was soon stripped of his Soviet citizenship, regaining it only 10 years later during Gorbachev's perestroika.

Aksyonov spent 24 years in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, where he taught Russian Literature at George Mason University. In 2004, he settled in Biarritz, France, and split his time between France and Moscow.

Vasily Aksyonov died on 6 July 2009 at the age of 76 in Moscow.