The Modern Novel

Biography

Leonid Tsypkin was born in Minsk in 1926 of Jewish parents, both of whom were doctors. Many of his family were killed either in the Stalinist purges or in the German attack on Minsk in 1941. After the war, Tsypkin studied medicine and became a reputed pathologist. However, because he was Jewish, his career suffered. His son and daughter-in-law emigrated to the United States in 1977 but, though he tried to do so, he was unable to emigrate. He devoted himself to producing his only novel – Лето в Бадене (Summer in Baden-Baden) – which was based on Dostoevsky‘s The Gambler. It was published in an émigré newspaper in the United States and not published in Russia till 1999. He died in 1982.

Other links

Leonid Tsypkin
Tsypkin, Leonid Borisovich
Цыпкин, Леонид Борисович (in Russian)