Fazil Iskander

Iskander worked between 1929 and 2016 across screenwriter, writer, journalist, novelist and poet and 1 further recorded occupations. The registers place that work in memoir, prose, satire, pritcha, aphorism and philosophical fable. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

Fazil Iskander studied at Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. The recorded working language is Russian. The field of work recorded is literature. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are memoir, prose, satire and pritcha. Places of work recorded in the authority are Abkhazia. Employment is recorded with State Committee for Publishing. Distinctions recorded are USSR State Prize, A. Pushkin Award, Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 2nd class and State Prize of the Russian Federation.

• Name — Fazil Iskander • Birth Name — Искандер, Фазиль Абдулович Fazil Abdulovich Iskander • Born — 6 March 1929 • Birthplace — Sukhumi, SSRA, TSFSR, USSR • Died — 31 July 2016 • Place of death — Peredelkino, Russia • Occupation — Novelist, essayist, poet • Genre — memoirs, satire, parable, essays, aphorism • Notable Works — Sandro of Chegem • Relatives — Abdul Ibragimovich Iskander (father); Leili Khasanovna Iskander (mother); Feredun Abdulovich Iskander (brother); Giuli Abdulovna Iskander (sister) • Illustration — Reverse side of a 10 apsar commemorative coin minted on 6 May 2009 to celebrate Fazil Iskander's 80th birthday.

Fazil Abdulovich Iskander was born in 1929 in the cosmopolitan port city of Sukhumi, Georgia (then part of the USSR) to an Iranian father (Abdul Ibragimovich Iskander) and an Abkhazian mother (Leili Khasanovna Iskander). His father was deported to Iran in 1938 and sent to a penal camp where he died in 1957. His father was the victim of Joseph Stalin's deportation policies of the national minorities of the Caucasus. As a result, Fazil and his brother Feredun and his sister Giuli were raised by his mother's Abkhazian family. Fazil was only nine years old at that time.

The most famous intellectual of Abkhazia, he first became well known in the mid-1960s along with other representatives of the "young prose" movement like Yury Kazakov and Vasily Aksyonov, especially for what is perhaps his best story, Sozvezdie kozlotura (1966), variously translated as "The Goatibex Constellation," "The Constellation of the Goat-Buffalo," and "Constellation of Capritaurus." It is written from the point of view of a young newspaperman who returns to his native Abkhazia, joins the staff of a local newspaper, and is caught up in the publicity campaign for a newly produced farm animal, a cross between a goat and a West Caucasian tur (Capra caucasica); a "remarkable satire of Lysenko's genetics and Khrushchev's agricultural campaigns, it was harshly criticized for showing the Soviet Union in a bad light." 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". Five films were made based upon parts of the novel. Iskander 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. Later Iskander resided in Moscow and was a writer for the newspaper Kultura. On 3 September 2011, a statue of Iskander's literary character Chik was unveiled on Sukhumi's Muhajir Quay.

Iskander had been married to a Russian poet Antonina Mikhailovna Khlebnikova since 1960. In 2011 the couple published a book of poems entitled Snow and Grapes to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. They had one son and one daughter.

Iskander died in his home on 31 July 2016 in Peredelkino, aged 87.

• Forbidden Fruit and Other Stories, Central Books LTD, 1972. • The Goatibex Constellation, Ardis, 1975. * • Contemporary Russian Prose (English and Russian Edition), 1980 • Sandro of Chegem, Vintage Books, 1983. • The Gospel According to Chegem, Vintage Books, 1984. • Chik and His Friends, Ardis 1985. • Bolshoi den bolshogo doma: Rasskazy, 1986 * • Rabbits and Boa Constrictors, Ardis, 1989. (Co-authored with Ronald E. Peterson) • The Old House Under the Cypress Tree, Faber and Faber, 1996. • The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules, Raduga, 1997. • Rasskazy, povestʹ, skazka, dialog, ėsse, stikhi (Zerkalo) (Russian Edition), 1999 • Parom (Russian Edition), 2004 • Kozy i Shekspir: [Goats and Shakespear:], Russian Edition, 2008 • Put' iz Variag v Greki (The Road from the Varangians to the Greeks), Russian Edition 2008 • Zoloto Vil'gel'ma: Povesti, Rasskazy (Gold of Vilgel'm: Stories, tales), 2010. • L'energia della vergogna (Italian Edition), 2014. • The Mystery of Conscience, 2016. • Departures, 2016 • Sandró de Cheguem (Narrativa) (Spanish Edition), 2017 • Druzia-priiateli/Detstvo Chika, Russian Edition 2018 • Zvezdnyy kamen (Russian Edition), 2019 • The Commonwealth Reconstructed * *

• Works by Fazil Iskander on Archive.org

Fazil Iskander was born on 6 March 1929 in Sokhumi. Iskander held the nationality of Soviet Union and Russia. Iskander was educated at Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, which Iskander left in 1954. Iskander worked as screenwriter, writer, journalist and novelist, and the authority record catalogues a further 2 occupations under the same name, among them poet and essayist. Iskander was active from 1957. Iskander worked in Abkhazia. Iskander was employed by State Committee for Publishing (1956). The fields Iskander worked in include memoir, prose, satire, pritcha, aphorism, philosophical fable and essay. Iskander worked in Russian. Iskander died on 31 July 2016 in Peredelkino. Iskander is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.

• Illustration — Presentation of the Order "For Merit of the Fatherland", 4nd class with Dmitry Medvedev, 17 February 2010 • USSR State Prize (1989) - for his novel "Sandro of Chegem" • Alfred Toepfer foundation's Pushkin Prize (1992) • State Prize of the Russian Federation in Literature and Arts (1993, 2013) • Triumph Prize (1999). • Order of Honour and Glory, 1st class (Abkhazia, 18 June 2002) • Order of Merit for the Fatherland) • 2nd class (29 September 2004) • 3rd class (3 March 1999) • 4th class (13 March 2009, presented on February 17, 2010.) • Honorary Member of Russian Academy of Arts • Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award (2011) - for the novel "Sandro of Chegem" • Ivan Bunin literary award (2013) In 2009, Bank of Abkhazia issued a commemorative silver coin from the series "Outstanding Personalities of Abkhazia", dedicated to Fazil Iskander denomination of 10 apsaras. Already after the writer's death, the Fazil Iskander International Literary Prize was established in Russia in three nominations: prose, poetry and screenplay based on the works of Iskander. The Fazil Iskander International Literary Award is now in its sixth year. was established on August 3, 2016 by the Russian branch of the International Russian PEN Center.