Tales for every season

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870 – 1953) was a Russian writer, poet, and translator, a 1933 Nobel prize laureate in literature.

Having come from the family of an impoverished nobleman, Bunin moved out and began to live independently as a very young man. In his youth, he worked for newspapers and offices, frequently leading a nomadic life. His first published work was a poem At the tomb of S. Y. Nadson (1887), followed by a book of poetry published in 1891 in Orel. In 1903, he won Pushkin’s Prize for his book, Leaf Fall and translation of The Song of Hiawatha. He received the prize again in 1909 for the third and fourth volumes of his complete works. In 1909, he was elected an honorary member of the Royal St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the field of linguistics.

In 1920, three years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Bunin immigrated to France, like many other Russian artists, writers, and performers. While there, he continued publishing regularly, becoming the first Russian writer to win the Nobel prize for, “the refined mastery, with which he developed the tradition of classic Russian prose.”

Bunin died in 1953 and was buried at the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery in Paris.