Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vladimir Sorokin was born on the 7th of August 1955 in Bykovo, in the Ramensky District of Moscow Oblast. He studied engineering at the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in Moscow, graduating in 1977.
Sorokin's works, including his first novel The Norm (1983), were banned during the Soviet pre-Perestroika period because they were examples of underground nonconformist art. His first publication in the USSR did not appear until November 1989, when the Latvian magazine Rodnik published a group of his stories.
Sorokin is known for stylistic mimicry, imitating literary styles from socialist realism to classical Russian prose. He described his early writings as "little binary literary bombs" combining incompatible socialist-realist and physiological elements to create an explosion of meaning.
Day of the Oprichnik, published in 2006, depicts a dystopian Russia set in 2027 with a Tsar in the Kremlin, a Russian language containing numerous Chinese expressions, and a "Great Russian Wall" separating the country from its neighbors. The novel won Sorokin the Premio Gregor von Rezzori in 2015.
Three days after the 24th of February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sorokin published a piece comparing Putin to Ivan the Terrible and describing Russian power as a medieval pyramid. He wrote that "the idea of restoring the Russian Empire has entirely taken possession of Putin" and argued Putin's ultimate goal was the dismemberment of NATO and the destruction of Western civilization.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Sorokin has been living in exile in Berlin. Following his public criticism of Vladimir Putin, his books were withdrawn from a number of Russian booksellers.