Arsen Revazov

Arsen Revazov (; born December 12, 1966) is an Israeli author, entrepreneur, and art-photographer.

Early life and entrepreneurship Arsen Revazov was born in Moscow, USSR, on December 12, 1966. He subsequently emigrated to Israel, where he lived for several years before returning to Moscow. In 2019 founded Oken Technologies, a neuroscience startup focused on detecting humans' cognitive state with eye tracking data. In 2020-21 as part of Oken Technologies' team Revazov published an article on the subject and filed patent application on corresponding machine learning technology.

Literary career Revazov's literary career began in 1992, when he published a collection of poems in Jerusalem, Israel. Between 1992 and 1995, he published a series of Russian-language short stories in Israel. In 2005, Revazov’s debut novel, Loneliness-12 (Odinochestvo-12), was published by Moscow-based Ad Marginem Press. The author dubbed it a “fusion thriller”—a blend of conspiracy thriller, mystery, adventure, travelogue, and postmodernist literary elements.

In Loneliness-12, Joseph Mezenin, the hapless owner of a failing Moscow PR agency, teams up with his two best friends—a hot-headed go-getter, Matty Krasnov, and a mathematician turned high-tech consultant, Anton Epstein—to investigate the murder of a fourth friend, the Chemist, found decapitated in his own apartment, head missing. Not long after the murder, Joseph receives an advertising contract from an anonymous new client, FF, who pledges big money for each media placement of the words Deir el-Bahari, Calypsol, loneliness, and the number 222461215 but demands absolute nondisclosure. Unable to keep this momentous secret, Joseph reveals it to his friends and to his already-married girlfriend, Maria Zephori, precipitating further deaths, mysteries, and high-stakes encounters that take the group through Israel, Italy, Japan, and throughout Russia in search of the Chemist's murderers. As the friends unravel FF's keywords, they find themselves battling an international cult of the woman-pharaoh Hatshepsut to defeat which they must brave government bureaucracies, psychedelic rituals, historical puzzles, daring escapes, existential mysteries, love triangles, and the prospect of eternal loneliness.

Loneliness-12 became a bestseller in Russia and attracted praise and mentions from critics, journalists, bloggers, and publications—including The Moscow Times, Newsweek Russia, The Russian Gazette, Gazeta.ru, MK Boulevard, Vedomosti, Novaya Gazeta, Kommersant Business Gazette, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Afisha, and others.

The politician and journalist Valeriya Novodvorskaya described Loneliness-12 as a "saga written in very good Russian prose masterfully laced with slang—a tale of four modern-day musketeers who venture through fire, water, and brass pipes, through perestroika, privatization, and wild capitalism, through jails and privations, through monastic cells and mystical afterworlds, through the Vatican, the Land of Israel, and the mansion of a mafia kingpin." Russian critic Lev Danilkin described it as "'Murakami plus'—plus Foucault's Pendulum, plus The Da Vinci Code, plus The Club Dumas, plus Naïve. Super., plus By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. Plus Seven Years In Tibet, plus Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, plus In the Mood for Love, plus The Bourne Identity, plus The Ninth Gate." Between 2006 and 2013, Loneliness-12 was translated into several languages—including Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, and German—and published internationally under various titles.[⇨]

In 2020, the novel, heavily rewritten, was re-released by Corpus. The book received positive reviews from critics.

At the moment, the writer is working on his next book - the novel "Loneliness-13. Metaferons". An experimental video book format was chosen for it: the author himself reads the text of the chapters on the camera, and the episodes are published on the You-tube channel, Yandex.Dzene and in online cinemas. The book premiered at the non / fiction 2021 exhibition.

In the future, it is planned to release the novel "Loneliness-13. Metaferons" in a traditional print edition.

Revazov is the founder and editor-in-chief of SilentRoom Journal, an online publication about writing and artificial intelligence.

Art photography Revazov is an art-photographer. He began experimenting with photography as early as the third grade of elementary school. The team was created in the fall of 2019. The group got its name in honor of the Yauza River, where Arsen spent his childhood, as well as in honor of the eponymous Soviet tape recorder.

The musicians began active creative and concert activity in the summer of 2020, the group managed to give a number of concerts in Moscow, perform at several city festivals and on television and radio.

On November 27, the group's first album, entitled "Butterflies and Tanks", was released. All the songs on the album were written by Arsen Revazov on the verses of the famous Leningrad-Jerusalem poet Mikhail Gendelev.

At the moment "Yauza" is working on the second album on the verses of Osip Mandelstam, from which two singles with music videos have already been released.

Miscellaneous Revazov is credited with the idea of the "white ribbon", which became a symbol of dissent during the 2011–13 Russian protests, against the results of the 2011 Russian legislative election.