Daniil Granin

Daniil Aleksandrovich Granin (; 1 January 1919 – 4 July 2017), original family name Gherman , was a Soviet and Russian author.

Life and career Granin started writing in the 1930s, while he was still an engineering student at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute. After graduation, Granin began working as a senior engineer at an energy laboratory, and shortly after war broke out, he volunteered to fight as a soldier.

One of the first widely praised works by Granin was a short story about graduate students titled "Variant vtoroi" (The second variant), which was published in the journal Zvezda in 1949. Granin had continued to study engineering and work as a technical writer before he achieved literary success, thanks to his Iskateli (The Seekers, 1955), a novel inspired by his career in engineering. This book was about the overly bureaucratic Soviet system, which tended to stifle new ideas. He continued writing in the post-Soviet era. Written together with Ales Adamovich, the book is based on the interviews, diaries and personal memoirs of those, who survived the siege during 1941–44. It was nominated for the 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. On September 8, 2021, the film "The Blockade Diary," based on Granin's "A Book of the Blockade," was presented in Moscow cinemas.

One of his most popular books is The Bison (1987), which tells the story of the Soviet geneticist Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky.

Honours and awards

Presentation of the Order of St. Andrew with President Dmitry Medvedev, 26 January 2009

Hero of Socialist Labour (1989) Order of St. Andrew (28 December 2008) – for outstanding contribution to the development of national literature, many years of creative and social activities Order of Lenin Order of the Red Banner of Labour Order of the Red Star Into the Storm (1962, tr. 1965) (adapted as the 1966 Soviet film Going Inside a Storm) The House on the Fontanka (1967, tr. 1970) A Book of the Blockade (1979, tr. 1983) The Bison: A Novel about the Scientist Who Defied Stalin (1987, tr. 1990)