Russian Disco

Born in Moscow, Wladimir Kaminer emigrated to Berlin in the early '90s when he was 22. Russian Disco is a series of short and comic autobiographical vignettes about life among the émigrés in the explosive and extraordinary multi-cultural atmosphere of '90s Berlin. It's an exotic, vodka-fuelled millennial Goodbye to Berlin. The stories show a wonderful, innocent, deadpan economy of style reminiscent of the great humorists. [Several of his European editors make a comparison with current bestseller David Sedaris.] Kaminer manages to say a great deal without seeming to say much at all. He speaks about the offbeat personal events of his own life but captures something universal about our disjointed times.

Born in Moscow in 1967, after studying drama and finishing his military service, he started a new life in Berlin in 1990. In Germany, Kaminer is now a renowned DJ for the infamous Russian Disco, a compulsory weekly event for young Berliners, which prompted Marie Claire to name him one of the 6 most important people in Berlin.