Aleksey Remizov was born into a family of Moscow merchants. As a student he was arrested by mistake for resistance to the police during a protest march and was exiled to the north of Russia. After his return from exile in 1905 he settled in St. Petersburg and started active literary activity. In the years of revolution and the following Military communism Remizov remained in Petrograd (Petersburg), though politically he was inclined against Bolsheviks, while tending to socialist revolutionary circles.

In summer 1921 Remizov left Russia, going to Germany for medical treatment; the writer believed it would be “temporary” and yet, he was not destined to come back. In November 1923 driven by economic crisis, Remizov moved from Berlin to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life.

In the end of his life the writer got Soviet citizenship yet never returned to Russia and was buried at Sainte Genevieve des Bois Cemetery in France.

Remizov is mainly famous for his intricate fairy tales (the collections Posolon (1907) and Dokuka i balagurie (1914) and symbolist novels and stories, such as The Pond (1905), The Clock (1908), The Indefatigable Cymbal (1910), The Sacrifice (1911), Sisters of the Cross (1910), and The Fifth Pestilence (1912). When in emigration Remizov mainly wrote fictionalized memoirs; the most well-known of them is Whirlwind Russia (1927). He is also the author of several dramas, including Tragedy of Judas, Prince of Iscariot.