Author: Valentin Pikulʹ
Born: 13 July 1928
Died: 16 July 1990
Bio: Valentin Savvich Pikul (Russian: Валенти́н Са́ввич Пи́куль) was a popular and prolific Russian/Soviet historical novelist. He lived and worked in Riga.

Pikul's novels were grounded in extensive research, blending historical and fictional characters and often focusing on Russian nationalistic themes. Pikul's best-selling 1978 novel *At the Last Frontier* was a dramatized telling of Rasputin's influence over the Russian imperial court. Richard Stites says he was "a name hardly known to literary scholars but the most widely read author in the Soviet Union from the seventies to 1991. Pikul's works were wildly popular: more than 20 million copies were sold in his lifetime.