Oleg Pavlov published "Official Tale", his first novel, at the age of twenty four and was immediately noticed by the critics and by his colleagues, Victor Astafjev and Georgy Vladimirov as well as by the Booker Prize jury, which included "Official Tale" in final 6 runners up in 1995. The next novel "Matjushkin's Case" (1997) confirmed Oleg Pavlov's reputation as a writer who works within the great Russian literary tradition of sympathy and compassion toward the "poor people". The everyday life in the army, which looks more like the prison camp; the soldiers each one of whom goes through his own circles of Inferno; one day in a life of a hospital for the handicapped people lost in the middle of nowhere, where a little boy accidentally winds up - these are the places researched by O. Pavlov, who step by step studies the abyss of humiliation and evil, where his characters live...
