Yuz AleshkovskyYuz Aleshkovsky was born in 1929 in Krasnoyarsk and grew up in Moscow. He served in the Soviet navy and was imprisoned from 1950 to 1953 for "violating discipline." He published children's books but became best known for his songs and novels circulatd in samizdat before he emigrated to the United States in 1979. His novels Kangaroo and The
Hand were published in English translation in the 1980s. In 2001 he received the Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation for his entire body of work. He lives in Middletown, Connecticut. Read More Read Less