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.
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The Making of Mr. Putin
May 25, 2000
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.
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Out of This World
April 13, 2000
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Russian Roulette
November 19, 1998
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Missing Persons
January 15, 1998
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
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Love Story
November 20, 1997
Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andreï Makine, Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
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The Way They Live Now
April 24, 1997
Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia by David Remnick
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On Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996)
February 29, 1996
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Russian Lessons
October 19, 1995
‘The Russian Question’ at the End of the Twentieth Century
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated and annotated by Yermolai Solzhenitsyn
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Boris the First
June 23, 1994
The Struggle for Russia by Boris N. Yeltsin, translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
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The Age of Innocence
October 21, 1993
Classic Russian Cooking: Elena Molokhovets’ ‘A Gift to Young Housewives’ translated and introduced by Joyce Toomre
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The Golden Age
December 17, 1992
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
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In Cannibalistic Times
April 11, 1991
The Great Terror: A Reassessment
by Robert Conquest
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Notes from Underground
May 31, 1990
Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope by Francine du Plessix Gray