Ivan Bunin

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953) was a Russian poet, translator and prose writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933. He was born in Voronezh into an old landed family and spent his childhood and youth on his father's estates in central Russia, an upbringing that shaped his close attention to the countryside and its people. He wrote verse and prose from an early age, translated English poetry, and in his own account kept apart from literary schools and politics. His novel The Village, published in 1910, gave a harsh and unidealised picture of Russian peasant life and made his name. Other works include the novel Mitya's Love, the story The Gentleman from San Francisco and the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev. After leaving Moscow in 1918 and Russia in 1920 he lived in France until his death in 1953.