Andreï Makine

Andreï Makine is a French novelist born in Krasnoyarsk, in what was then the Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. Raised partly by a French-speaking grandmother, he grew up bilingual in Russian and French. He emigrated to France in 1987 and was granted political asylum, building a literary career writing in French; he became a French citizen in 1996.

His breakthrough novel, Dreams of My Russian Summers (Le Testament français), won the Prix Goncourt, the Prix Médicis and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 1995. He has also published under the pseudonym Gabriel Osmonde. In 2016 he was elected to the Académie française, occupying seat 5.