Fazil Iskander

Fazil Iskander
Photograph by Remziy Agrba
Born	March 6, 1929 (1929-03-06) Sukhumi, USSR
Genres	Fiction
Notable work(s)	Sandro of Chegem

Reverse side of a 10 apsar commemorative coin minted on 6 May 2009 to celebrate Fazil Iskander's 80th birthday.

Fazil Abdulovich Iskander (Russian: Фази́ль Абду́лович Исканде́р; 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".

Biography

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.^{[citation needed]} He warned that Abkhazia could become a new Nagorno-Karabakh.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

Iskander currently resides in Moscow. He is 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.

List of awards and prizes

Iskander being awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland by President Dmitry Medvedev, 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)
• 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

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.

Notes

Works in English translation

• Forbidden Fruit and Other Stories, Central Books LTD, 1972.
• The Goatibex Constellation, Ardis, 1975.
• Sandro of Chegem, Vintage Books, 1983.
• The Gospel According to Chegem, Vintage Books, 1984.
• Chik and His Friends, Ardis 1985.
• Rabbits and Boa Constrictors, Ardis, 1989.
• The Old House Under the Cypress Tree, Faber and Faber, 1996.
• The Thirteenth Labour of Hercules, Raduga, 1997.

Online

• Stories in English.
• Iskander's story Forbidden Fruit in English.