Mikhail Shishkin

Mikhail Shishkin was born in 1961 and is the only writer to win all three of the most prestigious literary awards: the Russian Booker for his novel The Taking of Izmail (2000), the national Bestseller Award for his novel Maidenhair (2005) and the Big Book Prize for the novel Pismovnik (2010). His works have been translated into 30 languages and honoured in Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland. In his essays, published by leading global publishers, Shishkin criticises Vladimir Putin’s regime, and in his book My Russia: War or Peace? he interprets the Russian aggression against Ukraine to western readers through Russia’s history and the history of his family. In his new book Mine. Essays on Russian Literature (2024), Shishkin gives a new perspective on Russian writers through the war lens.