Robert Mann is a writer and researcher based in Florida. In addition to his works of fiction (The Master and Marmeladov, Where the Ice Never Melts, among other titles), he has published studies of Dostoevsky, Babel, Bely, Bulgakov, the Russian folk epic, and the the Kulikovo Cycle. He has unwaveringly argued that the twelfth-century Igor Tale is an oral composition and recently found new textual parallels linking the rare Golovin edition of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche that evidence the oral nature and the authenticity of the Igor Tale as a genuine twelfth-century song. Golovin's rare text and Mann’s commentary appear in Volume 8 of Monuments of Early Russian Literature (Berkeley Slavic Specialties).