Mikhail Veller

Mikhail Iosifovich Veller (also sometimes Weller; Russian: Михаи́л Ио́сифович Ве́ллер, Ukrainian: Михайло Йосипович Веллер) (born May 20, 1948) is a Russian writer of Ukrainian Jewish extraction. He holds a dual citizenship of Russia and Estonia. Veller was born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (modern day Ukraine) in 1948. In 1972 he graduated with a degree in linguistics from Leningrad University. He worked as a children's summer camp counselor, a hunter in Taimyr, a shepherd in the Altai mountains, a logger, a journalist, a teacher, and more - around 30 professions in all. Veller's first book, a collection of short stories titled I Want To Be A Yard-Sweeper, was published in Estonia in 1983, followed by Heart Breaker (1988), Technology of a Short Story (1989), and Rendezvous with a Celebrity (1990). A Novel of Upbringing and Adventures of Major Zvyagin (1991) became bestsellers, along with "The Legends of Nevsky Prospect" (1993). His book Everything about Life is a book about how the world works, why a no one ever has what they need, and why happiness is not achievable but should be sought (his later book Cassandra updates this philosophy). His mini-novel The Knife of Seryozha Dovlatov created a literary scandal. Hist latest bestseller, Courier from Pisa (2000), has had 11 editions. In Everything about Life Veller repeated Ernest Hemingway's words: "There are people who want to know everything and those who are sick of what they already know. The latter say nothing to prevent things from turning for the worse, while the former interfere in all, hoping to make things better" (paraphrased). Veller proclaims himself to be with the former kind. Veller nurtures his world-view to the point that he publishes volumes with philosophical inclination. He invented energoevolutionism. According to this theory the primordial energy released in the Big Bang is attached to material structures of ever increasing complexity, which in their turn decompose and rel