Maria V. Toropygina graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1981, and in 1988 received a PhD in Japanese literature. Since 2001 she has worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow as a senior researcher. She has translated several works of contemporary fiction, including Shusaku Endo's Mirror, Sokyu Gen'yu's Flowers in Limbo, and Nobuo Kojima's Embracing Family.