Lev Danilkin

Born: 1974

Quick Study: After establishing himself as a journalist and adept literary critic, Danilkin has proven himself as a very skilled writer of long-form biographies, too.

The Danilkin File: Lev Danilkin’s long run writing a book review column on the Afisha site established him as a household name among Russian bookworms: he read broadly, published regular reviews, and even collected his thoughts on contemporary fiction for several books. Even so, by the time he departed from Afisha in 2014, Danilkin had already written several biographies, including one about controversial writer Alexander Prokhanov, a book that was a finalist for the 2008 National Bestseller and Big Book awards. He also wrote a life of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (2011). Danilkin fully hit his stride as a biographer with Lenin. Pantocrator of Dust Motes, a very lively and very thick (784 pages) biography of Vladimir Ilich Lenin that won both the Big Book and Prose of the Year awards in 2017.

Psssst………: Beyond being a writer, critic, and journalist, Danilkin has also worked as a translator: his translation of Julian Barnes’s Letters from London was published in 2008… Danilkin   told Esquire that he tried translating Tolkien’s The Hobbit as a teenager but got stuck on “all those endless monosyllabic English verbs in the songs.”

Danilkin’s Places: Vinnytsia, Ukraine, where he was born… Moscow State University, where he studied philology in graduate school...

The Word on Danilkin: Writer and critic Dmitry Bykov writes this of Danilkin’s biography of Lenin on Afisha: “any book relays not an idea but a spirit, just as any factory generates, first and foremost, not production but an atmosphere, creating itself. Danilkin’s book relays vivacity, confidence, and common sense to the reader. The book is nourishing, densely written, and businesslike. I wouldn’t call it especially absorbing – or, to be more specific, universally interesting – but, as Yuri Shcheglov used to say, ‘it won’t be boring for those it interests.’ Anyone interested in Russia and Russia’s most vivid characters will need this book.”

Danilkin on Danilkin & Writing: In an interview with Egor Appolonov and Ekaterina Pisareva of Papa Will Call, when asked if it was true that he only finished his book about Lenin because of his publisher’s deadline, Danilkin responded by saying, “Of course it’s true. I could have written it for ten years or fifteen or until I died. It’s just that I understood that if [the book] – which was simply another, hundred millionth biography of Lenin – didn’t come out in ’17, then nobody would need it.”

Danilkin Recommends: When asked in that same Papa Will Call interview for a “Danilkin’s list” of contemporary Russian novels everyone should read, Danilkin first said that “nobody has to do anything,” then mentioned Vladimir Makanin’s Asan, Leonid Yuzefovich’s Cranes and Pygmies, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, Zakhar Prilepin’s The Monastery, and Alexei Ivanov’s The Geographer Drank Away His Globe. He added that he also liked Sergei Shikera’s Egyptian Metro very much. Danilkin offers a similar list for a list of “best Russian books of the twenty-first century” for a lengthy, detailed Esquire piece about reading, adding Mikhail Shishkin’s The Taking Izmail, Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Laurus, Vladimir Sorokin’s Tellurium, and Viktor Pelevin’s Buddha’s Little Finger/Clay Machine Gun. 

Photo: Sergey Medvedev