Robert Dessaix is a writer, interviewer, translator and broadcaster. From 1985 to 1995, after teaching Russian language and literature for many years at the Australian National University and the University of NSW, he presented the weekly Books and Writing program on the ABC Radio National. His best-known books, all translated into several European languages, are his autobiography A Mother's Disgrace, the novels Night Letters and Corfu, and a collection of essays and short stories (and so forth). He has also published translations of works by Dostoyevsky and Turgenev, and his translations of plays by Anton Chekhov have been produced in theatres around Australia.