Victor Nekrasov was a leading Russian novelist, journalist, editor and dissident. His acclaimed novel Front-Line Stalingrad is based on his experiences as a Red Army sapper in the besieged city. When the novel was first published in Russian in 1946 it was awarded the Stalin prize for literature, but Nekrasov later protested against Stalinism, was expelled from the Communist Party and had his Soviet citizenship revoked. He died in Paris in 1987.