Wladimir Kaminer — author with roots in the USSR
Wladimir Kaminer is a Russian-German author and DJ born in Moscow who emigrated to Berlin in 1990 and became one of Germany's most beloved writers through his debut book Russendisko (Russian Disco, 2000) — a collection of comic stories about Russian life in reunified Berlin. He also DJ'd actual Russian Disco nights that became a Berlin institution.
Tracing the roots — Moscow
Born in Moscow in 1967 and arriving in Berlin at the moment of German reunification, Kaminer captured the absurdity of the Russian immigrant experience in Germany with warmth, self-deprecation, and precise comic observation. His Berlin — the collision of Soviet past and German present — is one of the finest literary portrayals of the Russian diaspora's encounter with the West.
Moscow. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.