Sergei Lebe­dev was born in Moscow in 1981 and worked for sev­en years on geo­log­i­cal expe­di­tions in north­ern Rus­sia and Cen­tral Asia. Lebe­dev is a poet, essay­ist, and jour­nal­ist. His nov­els have been trans­lat­ed into twen­ty lan­guages and have received great acclaim in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. The New York Review of Books has hailed Lebe­dev as ​“the best of Russia’s younger gen­er­a­tion of writers.”