About the Author:
Dmitry Lvovich Bykov (Russian: Дмитрий Львович Быков) is a Russian writer, poet, literary critic and journalist. He is also known as biographer of Boris Pasternak, Bulat Okudzhava and Maxim Gorky. Bykov graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the elite Moscow State University. Dmitry Bykov taught literature and the history of Soviet literature in Moscow’s secondary schools. As a journalist and critic, Bykov has been writing for the magazine Ogoniok since 1993. He has also periodically hosted a show on the radio station Echo of Moscow, which ran until 2008. Earlier, he was one of the hosts of an influential TV show Vremechko. Being one of the most prolific modern Russian writers, he gained additional recognition for his biography of Boris Pasternak published in 2005. The biography earned Bykov the 2006 National Bestseller (Национальный бестселлер) and Big Book (Большая Книга) awards. He later wrote influential biographies of Maxim Gorky and Bulat Okudzhava. In 2008 a documentary called Virginity (Девственность) was released in which Bykov was a co-writer. (More about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Bykov)