Tatyana Tolstaya — writer with roots in the USSR
Tatyana Tolstaya is a Russian writer and television personality born in Leningrad who is the great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy. Her short story collection On the Golden Porch (1987) made her internationally celebrated, and her novel The Slynx (2000) is a major work of Russian dystopian fiction. She has lived in the United States since the 1990s.
Tracing the roots — Leningrad
Born in Leningrad in 1951 into the Tolstoy literary dynasty — her grandfather was Alexei Tolstoy, the Soviet writer — Tatyana carries the greatest name in Russian literature. Her biting, ironic style and her refusal to spare either Soviet or post-Soviet Russia from her satirical gaze carry the family tradition into the contemporary era.
Leningrad. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.