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Orlando Figes was born in London on 20th November 1959 to Eva Figes who is a feminist writer and has a sister named Kate Figes who is also an author and an editor. He did his schooling from the year 1971 to 1978 at William Ellis School in the North London. Then for college he went to Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge taking History as the subject and graduated from there with the Double-Starred first which is very rare in the year 1982. To complete his PhD he went to Trinity College at Cambridge and worked as a fellow there from 1984 - 1999. From the year 1987-1999 he worked as a lecturer of History at Cambridge University and then he became the Chair of History inBirkbeck College at London University. Orlando Figes is mainly acknowledged for his work on History of Russia and all his books on the same have been translated into many other languages. “A People’s Tragedy” is a book written on Russian Revolution has been translated into 27 languages and it combines the social and political history of Russia in a biographical narration. It has fetched a lot of coveted awards which includes WH Smith Literary Award, Wolfson History Prize, Longman-History Today Book Prize, NCR Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other literary writing is Natasha’s Dance which deals with the cultural history of Russia. The other book written by him is “The Whisperer” which is a collection of documents which deals with private life of the people in the Stalin era. One of his contributions to the History was the book Crimea: The Last Crusade which is based on the panoramic history of 1853-56 Crimean war. The book has been written mainly drawing inspiration from French, Ottoman, Russian and British archives and it combines diplomatic, cultural, military and political history. It analyzes how a war left a lasting experience in the form of mark on the national consciousness of France, Turkey, Britain and France. His latest book written in the year 2012 is “Just send Me Word” which is a love story based in Gulag and is the story written based on the 1246 letters that was exchanged between the two lovers. The letters was exchanged between a Prisoner of Pechora named Lev Mishchenko and his girlfriend Svetlana Ivanova who lived in Moscow. All his works have gained a lot of popularity and is now part of history.
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