The author of 23 novels described himself as an “anti-Soviet Russian writer”. In the 1930s, both, his mother, journalist Yevgenia Ginzburg and his father, a Communist official, were sent to labor camps, while Aksenov was sent to an orphanage.

It was only when he turned 16 did Aksenov see his exiled mother in the far eastern Magadan region. Years later she would become world-renown for her memoir “Journey into the Whirlwind”.

Following his mother’s advice, Aksenov graduated from the Leningrad Medical University and worked as a doctor for a short time. But writing was in his blood and since 1960 it had become the be-all and end-all for him.

In 1979, together with several of his pen-friends, including Andrey Bitov and Fazil Iskander, Aksenov set up their own, uncensored journal entitled “Metropol”. The reaction of the authorities was as following: his colleague-writers were expelled from the official Union of Soviet Writers, and Aksenov immediately joined them in protest and voluntarily left the organization.

In 1980, the author of “The Moscow Saga” (better known as “Generations of Winter”), “The Island of Crimea”, “The Burn”, and “Oranges from Morocco” was forced into exile from the Soviet Union and lived in America for more than 20 years, stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

He was teaching Russian literature at George Mason University in Virginia and worked as a journalist for Radio Liberty.

Aksenov’s novels have been translated into many languages. In recent years the writer who, only in 1990, was given back his Russian citizenship, lived mostly in Biarritz in France, but also spent part of the year in Russia.

In 2004 he won his first literary award, the Russian Booker Prize, for his novel “Voltairiens and Voltairiennes”. The following year Aksenov became the laureate of the highest literary award in France.