Jonathan Coe is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! (1994) reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources that was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governments of the 1980s.
The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giradoux. It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent."
Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov is a Ukrainian author and public intellectual who writes in Russian. He is the author of 19 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, nine books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 37 languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Persian and Hebrew, and published in 65 countries. Kurkov, who has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the international media, notably in Europe and the United States, has written assorted articles for various publications worldwide. His books are full of black humour, post-Soviet reality and elements of surrealism.
Antonio Muñoz Molina is a Spanish writer and, since 8 June 1995, a full member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He received the 1991 Premio Planeta, the 2013 Jerusalem Prize, and the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for literature.
Death and the Penguin is a novel by Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov. Originally published in 1996 in Russian, it was translated and published in English in 2001. The events of the novel take place in 1996 and 1997 in Kyiv. It is a bleak, satirical work with surreal elements and dark humour.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a humorous novel by Marina Lewycka, first published in 2005 by Viking.
Keith Ridgway is an Irish novelist. An author, he has been described as "a worthy inheritor" of "the modernist tradition in Irish fiction".
Vassilis Alexakis was a Greek-French writer and self-translator of numerous novels in Greek, his mother tongue, and French.
Les Âmes grises is a novel by the French author Philippe Claudel. It is a first person narrative which revolves around the murder of a young girl in a small provincial French town near the Western Front in 1917. The book was published in France in 2005 and won the Prix Renaudot. It was also shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Femina.
Penguin Lost is a novel by Andrey Kurkov. Originally published in 2005 in Russian, it was translated by George Bird and published in English in 2010. It is the sequel to the author's novel Death and the Penguin.
Patrick McGuinness FRSL FLSW is a British academic, critic, novelist, and poet. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford, where he is Fellow and Tutor at St Anne's College.
Steve Sem-Sandberg is a Swedish journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer and translator. He made his literary debut in 1976 with the two science fiction novels Sländornas värld and Sökare i dödsskuggan. He was awarded the Dobloug Prize for fiction in 2005.
Alain Claude Sulzer is a Swiss writer and translator. He was born in Riehen, near Basel. Sulzer became a librarian, but also translated from French, for example parts of Julien Green's diaries. As a journalist he wrote for various newspapers and magazines, including the NZZ. He has published more than ten books and has won a number of literary awards in the process, such as the Rauris Literature Prize (1984), or the Hermann-Hesse-Preis (2009).
Owen Matthews is a British writer, historian and journalist. His first book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award, the Orwell Prize for political writing, and France's Prix Médicis Etranger. His books have been translated into 28 languages. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek.
Actes Sud is a French publishing house based in Arles. It was founded in 1978 by author Hubert Nyssen. By 2013, the company, then headed by Nyssen's daughter, Françoise Nyssen, had an annual turnover of 60 million euros and 60 staff members.
The Prix Femina étranger is a French literary award established in 1985. It is awarded annually to a foreign-language literary work translated into French.
Apeirogon is a novel by Colum McCann, published in February 2020.
Lola Bensky is the sixth novel by Australian author and poet Lily Brett. It was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2012. The novel, which won the 2014 Prix Médicis étranger, has been described as semi-autobiographical. Brett and Lola share the same initials, and both worked as music journalists in the 1960s.
Kuibysheve or Albat is an urban-type settlement in the Bakhchysarai Raion of Crimea. Population: 2,441 .
Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam is a French writer. She also writes under the pseudonym Rebecca Lighieri. In 2022, she was awarded the Prix Médicis for her novel La Treizième Heure.
