Olga Breininger (b. 1987) is a prose writer, cultural scholar, and literary critic. She was born in the Kazakh SSR (where her ethnically German family members were deported during the Stalinist era) and educated at the Gorky Literary Institute, Oxford University, and Harvard University, where her doctoral dissertation centered on the Northern Caucasus.
Following publications in Oktyabr, Novoye Literaturnoye Obozreniye, Druzhba Narodov, and other journals, Breininger’s debut collection, There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union, was published by dominant contemporary fiction editor Elena Shubina to widespread controversy. The book was nonetheless nominated for all four of Russia’s major annual prizes for literary prose.
