Vladimir Sorokin is a prominent Russian author, born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1955. He initially pursued engineering at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas, but later shifted his focus to art and writing, eventually becoming a significant figure in the Moscow underground scene of the 1980s. His work was prohibited in the Soviet Union, with his first novel, "The Queue," published by the renowned émigré dissident Andrei Sinyavsky in France in 1983.
In 1992, Sorokin's "Collected Stories" was nominated for the Russian Booker Prize. However, his career has not been without controversy. The publication of his novel "Blue Lard" in 1999, which featured a sexual scene involving clones of Stalin and Khrushchev, sparked public protests and calls for his prosecution on pornography charges. Despite this, Sorokin was awarded the Andrei Biely Award for his significant contributions to Russian literature in 2001.
In addition to his novels, Sorokin has written screenplays for movies such as "Moscow," "The Kopeck," and "4." He has also penned the libretto for Leonid Desyatnikov’s Rosenthal’s Children, the first new opera commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater since the 1970s. He has written numerous plays and short stories, and his work has been translated globally. Some of his most recent works include "Sugar Kremlin" and "Day of the Oprichnik." Despite the controversy that has surrounded his career, Sorokin remains a vital figure in contemporary Russian literature, residing in Moscow.