Victor Erofeyev was born in 1947 in Moscow. He is one of the most well-known contemporary Russian writers and a critical observer of contemporary Russia. He studied literature and linguistics at Lomonosov Moscow State University and did graduate work at the Institute for World Literature in Moscow, completing his doctorate there in 1975.

He mainly became known internationally through his debut novel, The Moscow Beauty (1990), which was translated into 27 languages. Since then, Erofeyev has published several acclaimed novels, essays, short stories, and travel reports, including the novel The Last Judgement (1997) and The Good Stalin (2004). From 2001 to 2011 Erofeyev was a professor of literature at the International University in Moscow. He writes regular columns and essays for highly regarded newspapers such as Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, and the New York Times.

The Samuel Fischer Visiting Professorship was set up in 1998 at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature by the S. Fischer Verlag, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Freie Universität Berlin, and the Lecture Forum of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Each semester an internationally acclaimed writer from abroad teaches a course at Freie Universität Berlin as a Samuel Fischer Visiting Professor.

Time and Location

• Wednesdays (April 1 to July 15, 2015), from 2 to 6 p.m. First class: April 15, 2015
• Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Alle 45, Room L 115, 14195 Berlin. subway station: Dahlem-Dorf or Thielplatz (U3).