For the rest of the 1990s , Prokhanov felt persecuted and marginalized . " Even in Soviet times I had the reputation of an " ode-singer to the State " , they called me " the Army Headquarters ' Nightingale " . Now in all of their new dictionaries I 've got demonized . While my friends , like Anatoly Kim , emerged as the aesthetes , I have been presented as an obscurantist . They advised Western publishers against translating me , putting me under blockade , " Prokhanov complained , speaking to Zakhar Prilepin . Things changed in the early 2000s when Prokhanov found himself among the Russian literary elite , even if his prose was getting increasingly morbid , surreal and apocalyptic . As the 1999 terrorist attacks upon residential houses shocked Russia , Prokhanov accused the state secret services in plotting these attacks and based his next novel upon these suspicions . In 2002 , '' Mr. Hexogen '' ( 2001 ) brought him the National Bestseller Award
1999 terrorist attacks upon residential houses
Russian apartment bombings
Alexander Prokhanov