Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841) was a Russian Romantic writer and poet. As a young man Lermontov was an officer in the guards, and was sent to fight in the Caucasus after insulting the tsar. His dramatic life ended after being shot down in a duel. Natasha Randall has published translations of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (shortlisted for the 2008 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize) and Osip Mandelstam's poetry as well as the work of contemporary writers Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Alexander Skidan, and Olga Zondberg. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, she lives in London.
""Natasha Randall's English, in her new translation, has exactly the right degree of loose velocity. . . . (Nabokov's version, the best-known older translation, is a bit more demure than Randall's, less savage.)"" —James Wood, London Review of Books ""[A] smart, spirited new translation."" —The Boston Globe ""One of the most vivid and persuasive portraits of the male ego ever put down on paper."" —Neil LaBute, from the Foreword