Sharov, Vladimir: - Historian of late-medieval Russia by training Vladimir Sharov, born in 1952, first turned to fiction in the late 1970s. It was not until the 1990s, however, that his extraordinarily imaginative and daring novels come to the attention of the public. When they did, they caused acrimony and controversy.subsequently his novels have won all the major Russian literary prizes. Before and During in 2014 was his first novel to appear in English.

Ready, Oliver: - Oliver Ready was born in 1976. He was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and read Russian and Italian at Oxford. After graduating in 1998, he lived in Poland and Russia, where he worked as an editor at the Moscow News and The Moscow Times. He is now the Russian editor for T.L.S.
Oliver Ready's translation of The Prussian Bride was awarded the inaugural Russian Translation Prize in 2005 and his translation of Before & During won the Read Russia Prize 2015.