Ilya (Mikhailovich) Frank was born in Moscow in 1963 into the family of an aviation engineer and a school teacher of Russian language and literature. From his father’s side he is part Jewish (his father spent his childhood in the 1910s and 20s in a small place near the border between the Ukraine and Moldavia; Frank is a common Jewish last name).

From his mother’s side he is Russian (the Kuznetsov name stems from merchants from a town called Kashira). He is also 1/8 German (his great-grandfather Rudolph Steip in his youth moved to Russia from Solingen in the middle of the 19th century hoping to find a suitable occupation).

Ilya Frank graduated from the Philological Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1985. His specialty is German Language Philologist and German Language Instructor. For some years he worked at school, later he taught several foreign language courses, and also worked at the Russian State Humanitarian University for one year. Ilya Frank has no scholarly degrees and has written no academic papers; he also has no calling for academic work (one must mention this in order to avoid possible misunderstandings). He loves learning foreign languages and literature.

Foreign language books have been adapted according to Ilya Frank’s Reading Method and published in Russia since 2001. By 2017, the number of such books reached approximately 350; they have been published in 60 foreign languages. Every month, several new books are published (and the number of languages that Ilya Frank’s Reading Method is applied to, is constantly expanding as well).

Naturally, these books are intended for the Russian speaking audience, thus all translations and notes are in Russian. The constantly updated list (in Russian) of such books can be found on Ilya Frank’s Russian website www.franklang.ru. We will be gradually ordering translations of some of these books into English and post them on our site to be downloaded by visitors free of charge. This is not going to happen very quickly, since it takes much time and money (translations into English are paid for by Ilya Frank from the royalties he receives for Russian books).

Ilya Frank coordinates translators’ work. In addition, he is director of his own School of Foreign Languages in Moscow (since 2003) and Head of the Multilanguage Study Project www.learnbyskype.ru.

Ilya Frank is the author of a short story about the German grammar “German Grammar with a Human Face” (Deutsche Grammatik mit menschlichem Antlitz) first published in 2000 and regularly reprinted since then. He is also the author of the cultural essay books “The Portrait of the Word” (2014), “The Leap over the Bull” (2014), “The Shadow of the Sword” (2015), “Odysseus, or Groundhog Day” (2015), “The other Trinity” (2017).