Immigrant Baggage
Cherry Orchard Books (Verlag)
978-1-64469-998-0 (ISBN)
2023 International Book Awards Finalist in the Humor/Comedy/Satire Category
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.
Maxim D. Shrayer, bilingual author and scholar, was born in Moscow in 1967 to a Jewish-Russian family with Ukrainian and Lithuanian roots and spent over eight years as a refusenik. He and his parents, the writer David Shrayer-Petrov and the translator Emilia Shrayer, left the USSR and immigrated to the United States in 1987. Shrayer received a PhD from Yale University in 1995. He is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. Shrayer has authored and edited over twenty books of nonfiction, criticism, fiction, poetry, and translations. Among his books are the literary memoirs Waiting for America and Leaving Russia and the collection A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas. He is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including a 2007 National Jewish Book Award and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship. Shrayer’s publications have been translated into ten languages. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Dr. Karen E. Lasser, a medical researcher and physician, and their daughters Mira and Tatiana.
Preface: Translingual Adventures
Ribs of Eden
In the Net of Composer N.
Romance with a Mortician
Only One Day in Venice
Yelets Women’s High School
A Return to Kafka
Index of Names and Places
About the Author
| Erscheinungsdatum | 20.02.2023 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | Illustrations |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 139 x 209 mm |
| Gewicht | 172 g |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte |
| Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-64469-998-2 / 1644699982 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-64469-998-0 / 9781644699980 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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