photo © Maxim Schirach

Norris von Schirach  [Germany]

Norris von Schirach was born in Munich in 1963. He published his first novel, Blasse Helden (tr: Pale Heroes) in the spring of 2018 under the pseudonym Arthur Isarin. Pale Heroes is set in the 1990s in Moscow, Siberia and Southern Ukraine during the euphoria and the abyss that followed the implosion of the Soviet Union. According to Viktor Yerofevev, “you should read ‘Pale Heroes’ if you want to understand today’s Russia”. It is the first volume of a planned trilogy, followed in 2022 by the novel Beutezeit (tr: Looting Time) about a commodity trader who is tasked with building up a steel company in grotesquely corrupt post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Norris von Schirach lives in Romania.