Leonid Dobychin Author

Leonid Dobychin was born in Dvinsk (today's Daugavpils), Latvia, in 1894. For most of his life he lived in provincial towns and eked out a living as a statistician. In early 1936, shortly after the publication of his novel The Town of N, Dobychin was attacked by the Leningrad Writers' Union. He disappeared the next day and was never seen again. The Town of N was published in English by Northwestern University Press in 1998. Richard C. Borden is the author of The Art of Writing Badly: Valentin Kataev's Mauvism and the Rebirth of Russian Modernism (1999) and co-translator of Dobychin's The Town of N (1998), both published by Northwestern University Press. Natalia Belova is also co-translator of Dobychin's The Town of N.