Leonid Tsypkin was born in Minsk in 1926 of Russian-Jewish parents, both physicians. His last book, Summer in Baden-Baden, is the culmination of a passionate, clandestine literary vocation; a distinguished medical researcher by profession, Tsypkin never saw a page of his literary work published during his lifetime. The manuscript of Summer in Baden-Baden was smuggled out of the Soviet Union in 1981, and the novel was first published in a Russian-émigré weekly in the United States. Tsypkin, who had been twice denied permission to leave the Soviet Union with his family, died of a heart attack in Moscow in 1982.
