He is the author of Sergeev and the Town (2005) and Happiness is Possible (And Other Stories, 2012), among others.
Oleg Zaionchkovsky was born in 1959 in Kuybyshev (now Samara), on the east bank of the Volga River.
He spent all his adult life, until a recent move to Moscow, in the small town of Khotkovo, working as a test engineer in a factory making rocket engines.
[1] Zaionchkovsky's first book, Sergeev and the Town (2004), was shortlisted for both the Russian Booker Prize and the National Bestseller Prize.
His book Happiness is Possible (2010) was also shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize as well as the Russian Big Book Prize.