The Russlander (51 page)

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of The Canada Council, The Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Regina Public Library, and McMaster University, during the writing of this work.

The epigraph from “Requiem: Epigraph” on
this page
is taken from
Poems of Akhmatova
by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Reprinted by permission of Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agency, New York.

Sandra Birdsell was born in Manitoba and, until recently, has spent most of her life in Winnipeg. Her first novel,
The Missing Child
(1989), won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her second novel,
The Chrome Suite
(1992), and her most recent collection of short fiction,
The Two-Headed Calf
(1997), were both shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction. Her two previous short story collections,
Night Travellers
and
Ladies of the House
, were reissued in 1987 as
Agassiz Stories
. Her most recent novel,
The Russländer
(2001), won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction, the Saskatchewan Book Award for Book of the Year, and the Regina Book Award, and was a finalist for The Giller Prize.

Sandra Birdsell's fiction has been anthologized and has appeared in literary journals and
Saturday Night
magazine.

She lives in Regina.