This 2003 photo shows Russian author Wladimir Kaminer at the club “Kaffee Burger” on Berlin’s Torstraße. Twice a month, Kaminer serves as DJ, spinning Russian pop music at the club’s “Russian Disco.” In 2000, he published a collection of stories under the same name and quickly established himself as a shooting star within Berlin’s literary scene. Kaminer was born in Moscow in 1967 and trained as a sound engineer for theater and radio before studying dramaturgy at Moscow’s Theater Institute. In 1990, he arrived in East Berlin as an asylum-seeker and has lived in Germany ever since. His essays deal in ironic fashion with the experiences of new Jewish immigrants from Russia.