Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Lyudmila Evgenyevna Ulitskaya (, born February 21, 1943) is an internationally acclaimed modern Russian novelist and short-story writer who, in 2014, was awarded the prestigious Austrian State Prize for European Literature for her oeuvre. In 2006 she published Daniel Stein, Interpreter (Даниэль Штайн, переводчик), a novel dealing with the Holocaust and the need for reconciliation between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She won the 2012 Park Kyong-ni Prize.

Biography Ulitskaya was born in the town of Davlekanovo in Bashkiria but her family moved to Moscow when she was nine months old. In Moscow, her family lived in communal apartments with many other families. After university, she worked for two years at the Institute of General Genetics, before she was fired in 1970 for reading and distributing samizdat literature. After this, she didn't work for about nine years. In this time she was married and then had two kids. Her first published short fiction appeared in 1990. In 1993, she published her first novel with Gallimard in France. Her first novel in Russian was published in 1994. Since 2022, Ulitskaya resides in Berlin, Germany.

Personal life Ulitskaya's third and current husband, Soviet and Russian sculptor Andrey Nikolaevich Krasulin (b. 1934) in July 2014 Ulitskaya's parents were both involved in science: her mother was a biochemist and her father was an engineer. She had two sons with Evgeniev: Aleksey (born 1972; businessman) and Pyotr (born 1975; jazz musician), one of whom graduated from Columbia University.

Fiction Style In her fiction, Ulitskaya seemingly describes and observes her characters at an equal distance from each one. Rather than going in for character development or delving into the tortured workings of her characters’ psyches otherwise perceived as the hallmark of Russian writing, Ulitskaya favors capsule descriptions, though she acknowledges that her characters are tortured. Generally speaking, she makes little use of dialogue. Masha Gessen, in her tribute article in The New Yorker in October 2014, finds that Ulitskaya's writing makes for compelling, addictive reading. Gessen reports that she was driven entirely by the desire to learn what happens next.

Themes Among her interlinked themes are: the need for religious and racial tolerance; the problem of the intelligentsia in Soviet culture; how women shape new gender roles in society; and everyday life as a literary subject.

Other activity

Ulitskaya authored two movie scripts produced in the early 1990s: The Liberty Sisters (Сестрички Либерти, 1990) and A Woman for All (Женщина для всех, 1991). She regularly publishes commentary on social issues and is actively involved in philanthropic projects increasing access to literature. In March 2014 Ulitskaya was among the key speakers at the Moscow Anti-War demonstration.

Reception Ulitskaya's first novella, Sonechka (Сонечка, 1992), and her second, Medea and Her Children (Медея и ее дети, 1996) became extremely popular, and both were shortlisted for the Russian Booker Award, in 1993 and 1997, respectively. She finally won the Russian Booker Prize in 2001 for The Kukotsky Enigma (Казус Кукоцкого, 2001), Her novel Daniel Stein, Interpreter (Даниэль Штайн, переводчик, 2006) was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Her works have been translated into over 25 languages, including English,

Political involvement Because Ulitskaya addresses both religion and politics in her work, she has moved to the forefront of the Russian political debate in recent decades. In 2011 and 2012, during the height of the anti-Putin protests in Russia, she became a board member for the League of Voters. She was also considered a traitor by the administration and was the subject of negative statements in state-owned outlets, such as Isvestia.

While Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian billionaire jailed on fraud charges, was incarcerated, he and Ulitskaya wrote each other letters. Ulitskaya maintains that the charges against him were politically motivated and thus "absurd." Their correspondence was published in a collection titled Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Articles, Dialogues, Interviews strongly condemning the war. She was also among the signatories of an appeal by eminent writers to all Russian speakers to spread the truth about the war inside Russia. Since March 2022, she has been living in Berlin.

Awards

Penne Prize (1997, Italy) Medici Prize (1998, France) Giuseppe Acerbi Award :it:Premio Letterario Giuseppe Acerbi (1998, Italy) for her novel Sonechka Penne Prize Winner (2000, Moscow) for Medea and Her Children Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (2003, France) Officer of the Legion of Honor Siegfried Lenz Prize (2020) Prix Formentor (2022)