Daniil Granin
Daniil Granin | |
|---|---|
 Granin in 2009 | |
| Born | Daniil Alexandrovich Granin Даниил Александрович Гранин 1 January 1919 Volyn, Kursk Governorate, Russian SFSR |
| Died | 4 July 2017 (aged 98) Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Occupation | Engineer, soldier, writer |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Alma mater | Leningrad Polytechnical Institute |
| Genre | Fiction |
Daniil Alexandrovich Granin (Template:Lang-ru; 1 January 1919[1] – 4 July 2017), original family name German (Template:Lang-ru),[2] was a Soviet and Russian author.
Life and career
Granin started writing in the 1930s, while he was still an engineering student at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute. After graduation, Granin began working as a senior engineer at an energy laboratory, and shortly after war broke out, he volunteered to fight as a soldier.[3]
One of the first widely praised works of Granin was a short story about graduate students titled "Variant vtoroi" (The second variant), which was published in the journal Zvezda in 1949. Granin had continued to study engineering and work as a technical writer before he achieved literary success, thanks to his Iskateli (The Seekers, 1955), a novel inspired by his career in engineering. This book was about the overly bureaucratic Soviet system, which tended to stifle new ideas.[3] Granin served as a board member of the Leningrad Union of Writers, and he was a winner of many medals and honors including the State Prize for Literature in 1978 and Hero of Socialist Labor 1989.[4] He continued writing in the post-Soviet era.[3]
Writing
According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: "The main theme of Granin’s works is the romance and poetry of scientific and technological creativity and the struggle between searching, principled, genuine scientists imbued with the communist ideological context and untalented people, careerists, and bureaucrats (the novels Those Who Seek, 1954, and Into the Storm, 1962)".
In 1979, he published Blokadnaya kniga (translated as A Book of the Blockade), which mainly revolves around the lives of two small children, a 16-year-old boy and an academic during the Siege of Leningrad.[5] Written together with Ales Adamovich, the book is based on the interviews, diaries and personal memoirs of those, who survived the siege during 1941–44.[6] It was nominated for the 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage.[7]
One of his most popular books is The Bison (1987), which tells the story of the Soviet geneticist Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky.[5] In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two.[8]
Honours and awards
- Hero of Socialist Labour (1989)[9]
- Order of St. Andrew (28 December 2008) – for outstanding contribution to the development of national literature, many years of creative and social activities[10]
- Order of Lenin[11]
- Order of the Red Banner[11]
- Order of the Red Star[11]
- Order of Friendship of Peoples[11]
- State Prize of the Russian Federation (12 June 2017)
Works
Below is a list of works by Granin translated into English:
- Those Who Seek (1954)[12]
- Into the Storm (1962, tr. 1965)[12]
- The House on the Fontanka (1967, tr. 1970)[12]
- A Book of the Blockade (1979, tr. 1983)[12]
- The Bison: A Novel about the Scientist Who Defied Stalin (1987, tr. 1990)[12]
References
- ^ Year of birth mistakenly given in some sources as 1918 because of a misprint in a 1964 literary encyclopedia: Vyacheslav Ogryzko, Russkie pisateli, sovremennaya epokha (Literaturnaya Rossiaya, 2004) ["Во втором томе «Краткой литературной энциклопедии» (М., 1964) дата рождения ошибочно указана 1 января 1918 года."].
- ^ "Dictionary of Literary Biography on Daniil Granin". Retrieved 19 February 2011..
- ^ a b c "Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers". Retrieved 31 October 2013.
- ^ "Гранин Даниил Александрович". War Heroes.
- ^ a b Anna Sorokina (5 July 2017). "5 must-read novels by Soviet docufiction writer Daniil Granin". Russia Beyond the Headlines. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
- ^ Daniil Granin, Ales Adamovich (2008). Leningrad Under Siege. Clare Burstall. Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-84415-458-6.
- ^ "Second Press Release 2004". Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. 2004. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
- ^ Писатели требуют от правительства решительных действий. Izvestia (in Russian). 5 October 1993. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
- ^ "Writer Daniil Granin Marks 95th Birthday". Russkiymir. 3 January 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
- ^ "Dmitry Medvedev awarded Daniil Granin the Order of St Andrew the Apostle". Kremlin. 26 January 2009. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
- ^ a b c d "Granin, Daniil Aleksandrovich". Soviet/Lit.net. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
- ^ a b c d e "Daniil Granin". Goodreads. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
External links
- Daniil Granin (1980). "An Autobiography of Daniil Granin" (in Russian). Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- "Daniil Granin's Life" (in Russian). Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- "The Works of Daniil Granin" (in Russian). Retrieved 12 July 2017.
- Daniil Granin (1971). "The Difference Between Soviet Literature and Western Literature".
- 1919 births
- 2017 deaths
- Recipients of the Order of Holy Prince Daniel of Moscow
- Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University alumni
- Russian male novelists
- Soviet novelists
- Soviet male writers
- 20th-century male writers
- Soviet short story writers
- 20th-century Russian short story writers
- Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
- People from Kursk Oblast
- Recipients of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 3rd class
- Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
- Members of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin
- Heroes of Socialist Labour
- Recipients of the Order of St. Andrew
- Recipients of the Order of Lenin
- Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner
- Recipients of the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class
- Recipients of the Order of Friendship of Peoples
- Honorary Members of the Russian Academy of Arts
- Academicians of the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences "Nika"
- Russian male short story writers