The Parallel Universes Of David Shrayer Petrov

Download The Parallel Universes Of David Shrayer Petrov full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Parallel Universes Of David Shrayer Petrov ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

The Parallel Universes of David Shrayer-Petrov

Author : Roman Katsman
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 : 1644695294
Total Pages : 553 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (446 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Parallel Universes of David Shrayer-Petrov by : Roman Katsman

Download or read book The Parallel Universes of David Shrayer-Petrov written by Roman Katsman and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume celebrates the literary oeuvres of David Shrayer-Petrov—poet, fiction writer, memoirist, essayist and literary translator (and medical doctor and researcher in his parallel career). Author of the refusenik novel Doctor Levitin, Shrayer-Petrov is one of the most important representatives of Jewish-Russian literature. Published in the year of Shrayer-Petrov’s eighty-fifth birthday, thirty-five years after the writer’s emigration from the former USSR, this is the first volume to gather materials and investigations that examine his writings from various literary-historical and theoretical perspectives. By focusing on many different aspects of Shrayer-Petrov’s multifaceted and eventful literary career, the volume brings together some of the leading American, European, Israeli and Russian scholars of Jewish poetics, exilic literature, and Russian and Soviet culture and history. In addition to fifteen essays and an extensive interview with Shrayer-Petrov, the volume features a detailed bibliography and a pictorial biography.

Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature

Author : Roman Katsman
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (871 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature by : Roman Katsman

Download or read book Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature written by Roman Katsman and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays covers a hundred-year history of Russian-language literature in Israel, including the pre-state period. Some of the studies are devoted to an overview of the literary process and the activities of its participants, others—to individual genres and movements. As a result, a complex and multifaceted picture emerges of a not quite fully defined, but very lively and dynamic community that develops in the most difficult conditions. The contributors trace the paths of Russian-Israeli prose, poetry and drama, various waves of avant-garde, fantasy, and critical thought. Today, in Russian-Israeli literature, the voices of writers of various generations and waves of repatriation are intertwined: from the "seventies" to the "war aliyah" of the recent times. Both the Russian-Israeli authors and their critics often hold different opinions of their respective roles in Israel’s historical and literary storms. While disagreeing on the definition of their place on the map of modern culture, Russian-Israeli writers are united by a shared bond with the fate of the Jewish state.

Empire of Objects

Author : Benjamin M. Sutcliffe
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN 13 : 0299344002
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (993 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Empire of Objects by : Benjamin M. Sutcliffe

Download or read book Empire of Objects written by Benjamin M. Sutcliffe and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2023 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although understudied in the West, Iurii Trifonov was a canonical Soviet author whose lifetime spanned nearly the whole of the USSR's history and who embodied many of its contradictions. The son of a Bolshevik murdered on Stalin's orders, he wrote his first novel in praise of the dictator's policies. A lifelong Muscovite, he often set his prose in the Central Asian peripheries of the USSR's empire. A subtle critic of the communist regime, he nonetheless benefited from privileges doled out by a censorious state. Scholars have both neglected Trifonov in recent years and focused their limited attention on the author's most famous works, produced in the 1960s through 1980s. Yet almost half of his output was written before then. In Empire of Objects, Benjamin Sutcliffe takes care to consider the author's entire oeuvre. Trifonov's work reflects the paradoxes of a culture that could neither honestly confront the past nor create a viable future, one that alternated between trying to address and attempting to obscure the trauma of Stalinism. He became increasingly incensed by what he perceived as the erosion of sincerity in public and private life, by the impact of technology, and by the state's tacit support of greed and materialism. Trifonov's work, though fictional, offers a compelling window into Soviet culture.

Reinventing Tradition

Author : Klavdia Smola
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (871 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Reinventing Tradition by : Klavdia Smola

Download or read book Reinventing Tradition written by Klavdia Smola and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was the Jewish tradition reinvented in Russian-Jewish literature after a long period of assimilation, the Holocaust, and decades of Communism? The process of reinventing the tradition began in the counter-culture of Jewish dissidents, in the midst of the late-Soviet underground of the 1960-1970s, and it continues to the present day. In this period, Jewish literature addresses the reader of the ‘post-human’ epoch, when the knowledge about traditional Jewry and Judaism is received not from the family members or the collective environment, but rather from books, paintings, museums and popular culture. Klavdia Smola explores how contemporary Russian-Jewish literature turns to the traditions of Jewish writing, from biblical Judaism to early-Soviet (anti-)Zionist novels, and how it ‘re-writes’ Haskalah satire, Hassidic Midrash or Yiddish travelogues.

Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories

Author : David Shrayer-Petrov
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 081565278X
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories by : David Shrayer-Petrov

Download or read book Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories written by David Shrayer-Petrov and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These fourteen stories by the acclaimed master of Jewish-Russian fiction are set in the former USSR, Western Europe, and America. Dinner with Stalin features Soviet Jews grappling with issues of identity, acculturation, and assimilation. Shrayer-Petrov explores aspects of antisemitism and persecution, problems of mixed marriages, dilemmas of conversion, and the survival of Jewish memory. Both an author and a physician, Shrayer-Petrov examines his subjects through the double lenses of medicine and literature. He writes about Russian Jews who, having suffered in the former Soviet Union, continue to cultivate their sense of cultural Russianness, even as they—and especially their children—assimilate and increasingly resemble American Jews. Shrayer-Petrov’s stories also bear witness to the ways Jewish immigrants from the former USSR interact with Americans of other identities and creeds, notably with Catholics and Moslems. Not only lovers of Jewish and Russian writing but all discriminating readers will delight in Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories.

The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories

Author : Max Apple
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421401746
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories by : Max Apple

Download or read book The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories written by Max Apple and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first collection to appear in twenty years from one of America's best short story writers. His thirteen stories are marvelous—funny, heartbreaking, and wise by turns, and on occasion all three at once. Praise for The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories: "Thank you, Mr. Apple! There's an art to writing a sad story that's also fun to read... Many of Apple's stories are heartbreaking, but there's hardly a page that doesn't yield a smile at one line or another." -New York Times Book Review "When it comes to Max Apple, what's not to like?... Apple is never ferocious, never crabby and rarely sentimental. He does not dislike his characters, and he refuses to condescent to them." -Foreword "Delightful, utterly cynicism-free stories collected here... celebrate serendipity... If a lot of contemporary short fiction falls into the category dubbed 'Kmart realism,' Apple needs his own category. Call it Kmart magical realism." -Washington Post Book World

Doctor Levitin

Author : David Shraer-Petrov
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780814345726
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (457 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Doctor Levitin by : David Shraer-Petrov

Download or read book Doctor Levitin written by David Shraer-Petrov and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a doctor's family torn apart by Soviet politics, persecution, and the Jewish struggle for freedom during the Cold War.

Waiting For America

Author : Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815651805
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Waiting For America by : Maxim D. Shrayer

Download or read book Waiting For America written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1987 a young Jewish man, the central figure in this captivating book, leaves Moscow for good with his parents. They celebrate their freedom in opulent Vienna and spend two months in Rome and the coastal resort of Ladispoli. While waiting in Europe for a U.S. refugee visa, the book’s twenty-year-old poet quenches his thirst for sexual and cultural discovery. Through his colorful Austrian and Italian misadventures, he experiences the shock, thrill, and anonymity of encountering Western democracies, running into European roadblocks while shedding Soviet social taboos. As he anticipates entering a new life in America, he movingly describes the baggage that exiles bring with them, from the inescapable family traps and ties to the sweet cargo of memory. An emigration story, Waiting for America explores the rapid expansion of identity at the cusp of a new, American life. Told in a revelatory first-person narrative, Waiting for America is also a vibrant love story in which the romantic main character is torn between Russian and Western women. Filled with poignant humor and reinforced by hope and idealism, the author’s confessional voice carries the reader in the same way one is carried through literary memoirs like Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, or Nabokov’s Speak, Memory. Babel, Sebald, and Singer—all transcultural masters of identity writing—are the coordinates that help to locate Waiting for America on the greater map of literature.

Leaving Russia

Author : Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815652437
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Leaving Russia by : Maxim D. Shrayer

Download or read book Leaving Russia written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy's confessional trilogy and Nabokov's autobiography, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a searing account of growing up a Jewish refusenik, of a young poet's rebellion against totalitarian culture, and of Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer's remembrances ore set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire's collapse. His moving story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence.

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Author : Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815651058
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Yom Kippur in Amsterdam by : Maxim D. Shrayer

Download or read book Yom Kippur in Amsterdam written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether set in Maxim D. Shrayer’s native Russia or in North America and Western Europe, the eight stories in this collection explore emotionally intricate relationships that cross traditional boundaries of ethnicity, religion, and culture. Tracing the lives, obsessions, and aspirations of Jewish-Russian immigrants, these poignant, humorous, and tender stories create an expansive portrait of individuals struggling to come to terms with ghosts of their European pasts while simultaneously seeking to build new lives in their American present. The title story follows Jake Glaz, a young Jewish man apprehensive about marrying a Catholic woman. After realizing Erin will not convert, Jake leaves the United States to spend Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, "a beautiful place for a Jew to atone." In "Sonetchka" a literary scholar and his former girlfriend from Moscow reunite in her suburban Connecticut apartment. As they reminisce about their Soviet youth and quietly admire each other’s professional successes, both wrestle with the curious mix of prosperity, loneliness, and insecurity that defines their lives in the United States. Yom Kippur in Amsterdam takes the immigrant narrative into the twenty-first century. Emerging from the traditions of Isaac Babel, Vladimir Nabokov, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shrayer’s vibrant literary voice significantly contributes to the evolution of Jewish writing in America.

Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature

Author : Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 : 1644691523
Total Pages : 1164 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (446 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature by : Maxim D. Shrayer

Download or read book Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 1164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited by Maxim D. Shrayer, a leading specialist in Russia’s Jewish culture, this definitive anthology of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, nonfiction and poetry by eighty Jewish-Russian writers explores both timeless themes and specific tribulations of a people’s history. A living record of the rich and vibrant legacy of Russia’s Jews, this reader-friendly and comprehensive anthology features original English translations. In its selection and presentation, the anthology tilts in favor of human interest and readability. It is organized both chronologically and topically (e.g. “Seething Times: 1860s-1880s”; “Revolution and Emigration: 1920s-1930s”; “Late Soviet Empire and Collapse: 1960s-1990s”). A comprehensive headnote introduces each section. Individual selections have short essays containing information about the authors and the works that are relevant to the topic. The editor’s opening essay introduces the topic and relevant contexts at the beginning of the volume; the overview by the leading historian of Russian Jewry John D. Klier appears the end of the volume. Over 500,000 Russian-speaking Jews presently live in America and about 1 million in Israel, while only about 170,000 Jews remain in Russia. The great outflux of Jews from the former USSR and the post-Soviet states has changed the cultural habitat of world Jewry. A formidable force and a new Jewish Diaspora, Russian Jews are transforming the texture of daily life in the US and Canada, and Israel. A living memory, a space of survival and a record of success, Voice of Jewish-Russian Literature ensures the preservation and accessibility of the rich legacy of Russian-speaking Jews.

Jonah and Sarah

Author : David Shrayer-Petrov
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815607768
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Jonah and Sarah by : David Shrayer-Petrov

Download or read book Jonah and Sarah written by David Shrayer-Petrov and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the deceptively simple narrative (Apple Cider Vinegar, Hurricane Bob) to the surrealist story (Dismemberers) and the magical tale (Jonah and Sarah and Lanskoy Road), the tempo fluctuates, but throughout, Shrayer-Petrov seamlessly preserves familiar voices. The stories have a genuine feel of the setting and epoch—the Russian stories work as narratives of everyday life, while the American stories offer an accurate sense of an émigré’s alienation. Like all good works of fiction, these stories take on a mythic quality and transcend time and place. Each carries and communicates to the reader an aura of mystery, the enigma of love, and a meeting of the Jewish past and present. Whether he invokes lyrical dialogue, gentle irony, or sharp polemical discourse, Shrayer-Petrov shows that he is a powerful presence in Russian and Jewish literature. For those interested in fiction about new immigrants to America or in the psychology of Jews in the two decades before the Soviet Union’s collapse, this collection is a must read.

The Cross

Author : Lamed Shapiro
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1480440809
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (84 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Cross by : Lamed Shapiro

Download or read book The Cross written by Lamed Shapiro and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “skilled translators of this admirably edited volume” offer English-speaking readers the chance to savor this Yiddish author’s “tale-telling power” (Harold Bloom). Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948) was the author of groundbreaking and controversial short stories, novellas, and essays. Himself a tragic figure, Shapiro led a life marked by frequent ocean crossings, alcoholism, and failed ventures, yet his writings are models of precision, psychological insight, and daring. Shapiro focuses intently on the nature of violence: the mob violence of pogroms committed against Jews; the traumatic aftereffects of rape, murder, and powerlessness; the murderous event that transforms the innocent child into witness and the rabbi’s son into agitator. Within a society on the move, Shapiro’s refugees from the shtetl and the traditional way of life are in desperate search of food, shelter, love, and things of beauty. Remarkably, and against all odds, they sometimes find what they are looking for. More often than not, the climax of their lives is an experience of ineffable terror. This collection also reveals Lamed Shapiro as an American master. His writings depict the Old World struggling with the New, extremes of human behavior combined with the pursuit of normal happiness. Through the perceptions of a remarkable gallery of men, women, children—of even animals and plants—Shapiro successfully reclaimed the lost world of the shtetl as he negotiated East Broadway and the Bronx, Union Square, and vaudeville. Both in his life and in his unforgettable writings, Lamed Shapiro personifies the struggle of a modern Jewish artist in search of an always elusive home.

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature

Author : Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317476964
Total Pages : 1349 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature by : Maxim D. Shrayer

Download or read book An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 1349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive anthology gathers stories, essays, memoirs, excerpts from novels, and poems by more than 130 Jewish writers of the past two centuries who worked in the Russian language. It features writers of the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, both in Russia and in the great emigrations, representing styles and artistic movements from Romantic to Postmodern. The authors include figures who are not widely known today, as well as writers of world renown. Most of the works appear here for the first time in English or in new translations. The editor of the anthology, Maxim D. Shrayer of Boston College, is a leading authority on Jewish-Russian literature. The selections were chosen not simply on the basis of the author's background, but because each work illuminates questions of Jewish history, status, and identity. Each author is profiled in an essay describing the personal, cultural, and historical circumstances in which the writer worked, and individual works or groups of works are headnoted to provide further context. The anthology not only showcases a wide selection of individual works but also offers an encyclopedic history of Jewish-Russian culture. This handsome two-volume set is organized chronologically. The first volume spans the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, and includes the editor's extensive introduction to the Jewish-Russian literary canon. The second volume covers the period from the death of Stalin to the present, and each volume includes a corresponding survey of Jewish-Russian history by John D. Klier of University College, London, as well as detailed bibliographies of historical and literary sources.

Yudl

Author : Layle Silbert
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
ISBN 13 : 1609804406
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (98 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Yudl by : Layle Silbert

Download or read book Yudl written by Layle Silbert and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in 1920s Chicago, the short novel Yudl follows its eponymous protagonist, a middle-aged editor at a left-leaning newspaper called The Yiddish Courier. Yudl and his wife have decided to become landlords, purchasing a vacant lot and hiring an acquaintance—aptly named Mason—to oversee the construction of their future apartment building. However, delays in the construction leave Yudl and his family without a home, forcing them to stay with Mason and his family until the construction is finally complete. Told with wry wit and a masterful sensibility for metaphor, the story explores gender, Zionism, and the immigrant experience in the US. The selection of short stories that follow the novel in this volume were selected by the author from her deathbed during her last weeks and then hours on earth. Silbert's graceful short stories focus on the family, allowing the reader glimpses of a child's happiness, the cripplingly contradictory demands of femininity, the complexity of grief, and a sustained meditation on life and death.

Autumn in Yalta

Author : David Shrayer-Petrov
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815608202
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (82 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Autumn in Yalta by : David Shrayer-Petrov

Download or read book Autumn in Yalta written by David Shrayer-Petrov and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The powerful voice of David Shrayer-Petrov’s immigrant fiction blends Russian, Jewish, and American traditions. Collecting an autobiographical novel and three short stories, Autumn in Yalta brings together the achievements of the great Russian masters Chekhov and Nabokov and the magisterial Jewish and American storytellers Bashevis Singer and Malamud. Shrayer-Petrov’s fiction examines the forces and contradictions of love through different ethnic, religious, and social lenses. Set in Stalinist Russia, the novel Strange Danya Rayev revolves around the wartime experiences of a Jewish Russian boy evacuated from his besieged native Leningrad to a remote village in the Ural Mountains. In the title story Autumn in Yalta, the idealistic protagonist, Dr. Samoylovich, is sent to a Siberian prison camp because of his ill-fated love for Polechka, a tuberculosis patient. In The Love of Akira Watanabe once again unrequited love is the focus of the central character, a displaced Japanese professor at a New England university. A fishing expedition and an old Jewish recipe make for a surprise ending in Carp for the Gefilte Fish, a tale of a childless couple from Belarus and their American employers. In the tradition of other physician-writers, such as Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams, Shrayer-Petrov’s prose is marked by analytical exactitude and passionate humanism. Love and memory, dual identity, and the experience of exile are the chief components.

Immigrant Baggage

Author : Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 126 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (871 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Immigrant Baggage by : Maxim D. Shrayer

Download or read book Immigrant Baggage written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2023-06-13 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a bilingual master of the literary memoir comes this moving and humorous story of losing immigrant baggage and trying to reclaim it for his American future. In this poignant literary memoir, internationally acclaimed author and Boston College professor Maxim D. Shrayer (Waiting for America) explores both material and immaterial aspects of immigrant baggage. Through a combination of dispassionate reportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversing the borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourished him—Russian, Jewish, and American. The spirit of nonconformism and the power of laughter come to the rescue of Shrayer’s autobiographical protagonist when he faces existential calamities and life’s misadventures. The aftermath of a dangerous ski accident in Italy reminds the memoirist of history’s black holes. A haunting, Soviet-era theatrical affair pushes the émigré protagonist to the brink of a disaster in a provincial Russian town. Attempting to collect overdue royalties from a Moscow publisher, the expatriate writer tips his hat to Kafka. The book’s six interconnected tales are held together by the memorist’s imperative to make the ordinary absurd and the absurd—ordinary. Shrayer parses a translingual literary life filled with travel, politics, and discovery—and sustained by family love and faith in art’s transcendence.