Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

Born in 1826 in Tula province, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov became one of the major Russian satirists of the nineteenth century. He is widely associated with the name Saltykov-Shchedrin, under which many readers know his work. Early experiences in a harsh provincial household and his later education helped shape the biting social vision that runs through his fiction.

He also worked in government service, and that direct knowledge of bureaucracy fed the irony and precision of his writing. Rather than writing gentle comedy, he used satire to show cruelty, hypocrisy, and foolishness in both official life and society at large.

Today he is remembered for turning anger at injustice into fiction that is still lively, strange, and funny. Even when his work is bleak, it has energy and wit, which is a big reason it continues to attract new readers.