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Biography Fazil Iskander
Fazil Abdulovici Iskander (rusă: Фазиль Абдулович Искандер) (n. 6 martie 1929 sau, după unele surse, 1939 în Sokhumi) este un scriitor abhaz, cunoscut în fosta Uniune Sovietică pentru povestirile sale despre viaÈ›a din Caucaz, scrise, în special, în limba rusă.
În 1993 a câștigat Premiul Pușkin. În prezent este rezident la Moscova.
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Fazil Abdulovich Iskander (Russian: Фазиль Абдулович Искандер; born 6 March 1929, Sukhumi, USSR) is arguably the most famous Abkhaz writer, renowned in the former Soviet Union for his vivid descriptions of Caucasian life, mostly written in Russian. He has written various stories, most famously "Zashita Chika", which star a crafty and likable young boy named "Chik".
The most famous intellectual of Abkhazia, he distanced himself from the Abkhaz secessionist strivings in the late 1980s and criticised both Georgian and Abkhaz communities of Abkhazia for their ethnic prejudices. He warned that Abkhazia could become a new Nagorno-Karabakh.
He is probably best known in the English speaking world for Sandro of Chegem, a picaresque novel that recounts life in a fictional Abkhaz village from the early years of the 20th century until the 1970s, which evoked praise for the author as "an Abkhazian Mark Twain." Mr. Iskander's humor, like Mark Twain's, has a tendency to sneak up on you instead of hitting you over the head. This rambling, amusing and ironic work has been considered as an example of magic realism, although Iskander himself said he "did not care for Latin American magic realism in general". A section of the novel dealing with Sandro's encounter with Joseph Stalin was made into the Russian film Baltazar's Feasts, or a Night with Stalin in 1989.
Iskander currently resides in Moscow. He is a writer for the newspaper Kultura.
List of awards and prizes
1989: USSR State Prize[citation needed]
1992: Alfred Toepfer foundation's Pushkin Prize
1993: State Prize of the Russian Federation in Literature and Arts
1999: Triumph Prize (1999).
1999: Order of Merit for the Fatherland 3rd Class, Russia
2002: Order of Honour and Glory (First Degree) Abkhazia
2004: Order of Merit for the Fatherland 2st Class, Russia
2009: Order of Merit for the Fatherland 4th Class, Russia
Works in English translation
Sandro of Chegem – New York: Vintage Books, 1983
The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules Raduga Publisher,C.I.S. 1997
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Recommended Reading
