Born in Moscow in 1962, VICTOR PELEVIN has established a reputation as one of the most interesting of the younger generation of Russian writers. He has degrees from Moscow s Gorky Institute of Literature and has written for the New York Times Magazine, Granta, and Open City. He was selected by the New Yorker as one of the Best European Writers Under 35 and by The Observer as one of the 21 Writers for the 21st Century. His novel Numbers won the Grigoriev Prize from the Russian Academy of Critics 2004.