Tatyana Tolstaya
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Tatyana Tolstaya was born in Leningrad in 1951 to an aristocratic family that includes the writers Leo and Alexei Tolstoy. After completing a degree in classics at Leningrad State University, Tolstaya worked for several years at a Moscow publishing house. In the mid-1980s, she began publishing short stories in literary magazines and her first story collection established her as one of the foremost writers of the Gorbachev era. She spent much of the late Eighties and Nineties living in the United States and teaching at several universities. Known for her acerbic essays on contemporary Russian life, Tolstaya has also been the co-host of the Russian cultural interview television program School for Scandal. Both her novel, The Slynx and her collection of stories, White Walls, are published by NYRB Classics.
From the Review
May 25, 2000: The Making of Mr. Putin
First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin, with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, Andrei Kolesnikov, Translated from the Russian by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The Russian original, Ot pervovo litsa, is available on the website www.vagrius.com.
April 13, 2000: Out of This World
November 19, 1998: Russian Roulette
January 15, 1998: Missing Persons
The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia by David King
Eyewitness to History: The Photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei with a biographical essay by Alexander Nakhimovsky, by Alice Nakhimovsky
November 20, 1997: Love Story
Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andreï Makine, Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
April 24, 1997: The Way They Live Now
Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia by David Remnick
February 29, 1996: On Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996)
October 19, 1995: Russian Lessons
'The Russian Question' at the End of the Twentieth Century by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated and annotated by Yermolai Solzhenitsyn
June 23, 1994: Boris the First
The Struggle for Russia by Boris N. Yeltsin, translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
October 21, 1993: The Age of Innocence
Classic Russian Cooking: Elena Molokhovets' 'A Gift to Young Housewives' translated and introduced by Joyce Toomre
December 17, 1992: The Golden Age
The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II by Edvard Radzinsky, translated by Marian Schwartz
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Family Albums by Prince Michael of Greece
April 11, 1991: In Cannibalistic Times
The Great Terror: A Reassessment by Robert Conquest
May 31, 1990: Notes from Underground
Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope by Francine du Plessix Gray
From New York Review Books
 | The Slynx In Tolstaya's vaudevillian-dystopian novel, set 200 years after an apocalyptic disaster destroys Russia, a lowly scribe is elevated to a life of privilege and becomes the bibliophile from hell. "A densely woven, thought-provoking fantasy"—Kirkus Reviews |
 | White Walls This first comprehensive collection of stories from a writer whom Edna O'Brien dubbed "an enchantress" shows off Tolstaya's unparalleled ability to reflect the heartbreak and humor of everyday life in contemporary Russia. |
Books by Tatyana Tolstaya
The Slynx: A Novel (2002)