Zinovy Zinik (Russian: Зиновий Зиник; born June 16, 1945) is a novelist and broadcaster.
Zinik was born in Moscow into a family of totally assimilated Russian Jews.[1] He studied painting at an art school and later studied topology at Moscow University. He started writing prose in the 1960s and contributed to the journal Teatr.[2]
He emigrated to Israel in 1975. In 1976 he accepted a job offer from the BBC and moved to the UK to work for the BBC World Service. His first published work was "Izveshchenie" (The notification, 1976); he is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels Peremeshchennoe litso (Displaced person, 1981), Nisha v Panteone (A niche in the Pantheon, 1985), and Russofobka i fungofil (The russophobe and the fungophile, 1986, tr. by Michael Glenny as The Mushroom-Picker, 1987), as well as the collection of short stories Mind the Doors (New York 2002). My Father's Leg, a documentary novella which evolved from an essay on Königsberg/Kaliningrad published in the Times Literary Supplement, was published in the Russian magazine Ural in 2005.
He can be heard on The Forum on the BBC World Service.
References[edit]
- ^ Zinovy Zinic,'Freelance,' in Times Literary Supplement, Nov., 18, 2011 p.16: 'In mny childhood, I had never heard a word of Yiddish, never held a bible in my hands, and didn't know what the word synagogue meant.'
- ^ Robert Porter in Neil Cornwell and Nicole Christian (ed.), Reference Guide to Russian Literature (Taylor & Francis, 1998: ISBN 1-884964-10-9), p. 919.
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