Maxim Shrayer's Books

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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.

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Page Count

1186

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317476956

ISBN 13

9781317476955

Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

The Legacy of Eduard Bagritskii

By: Maxim Shrayer

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Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

The Legacy of Eduard Bagritskii

By: Maxim Shrayer

Based in part on archival materials, Russian Poet/Soviet Jew examines the short and brilliant career of Eduard Bagritskii (1895-1934), a major Russian poet of Jewish origin. Shrayer provides a short biography, an examination of the problems of Jewish identity and Jewish self-hatred, and interviews with contemporary leaders of Russian ultra-nationalism to explore Bagritskii's Russian/Jewish dual identity. The book also includes the first English-language translations of Bagritskii's major works, along with rare archival photographs documenting the trajectory of his life and career.

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206

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0742507807

ISBN 13

9780742507807

Waiting For America

A Story of Emigration

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Waiting For America

A Story of Emigration

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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.

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Syracuse University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0815651805

ISBN 13

9780815651802

A Russian Immigrant

Three Novellas

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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A Russian Immigrant

Three Novellas

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

“A quietly powerful addition to the canon of émigré literature” —The Moscow Times No longer at home in Russia, but not quite assimilated into the American mainstream, the daily lives of Russian immigrants are fueled by a combustible mix of success and alienation. Simon Reznikov, the Boston-based immigrant protagonist of Maxim D. Shrayer’s A Russian Immigrant, is restless. Unresolved feelings about his Jewish (and American) present and his Russian (and Soviet) past prevent Reznikov from easily putting down roots in his new country. A visit to a decaying summer resort in the Catskills, now populated by Jewish ghosts of Soviet history, which include a famous émigré writer, reveals to Reznikov that he, too, is a prisoner of his past. An expedition to Prague in search of clues for an elusive Jewish writer’s biography exposes Reznikov’s own inability to move on. A chance reunion with a former Russian lover, now also an immigrant living in an affluent part of Connecticut, unearths memories of Reznikov’s last Soviet summer while reanimating many contradictors of a mixed, Jewish-Russian marriage. Told both linearly and non-linearly, with elements of suspense, mystery and crime, these three interconnected novellas gradually reveal many layers of the characters’ Russian, Jewish, and Soviet identities. Vectors of love and desire, nostalgia and amnesia, violence and forgiveness, politics and aesthetics guide Shrayer’s immigrant characters while also disorienting them in their new American lives. Set in Providence, New Haven and Boston, but also in places of the main character’s pilgrimages such as Estonia and Bohemia, Shrayer’s book weaves together a literary manifesto of Russian Jews in America.

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106

Publisher

Academic Studies PRess

Published Date

ISBN 10

1644690977

ISBN 13

9781644690970

A Russian Immigrant

Three Novellas

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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A Russian Immigrant

Three Novellas

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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106

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Academic Studies PRess

Published Date

ISBN 10

1644690977

ISBN 13

9781644690970

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Stories

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Stories

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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.

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Page Count

154

Publisher

Syracuse University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0815651058

ISBN 13

9780815651055

Leaving Russia

A Jewish Story

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Leaving Russia

A Jewish Story

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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.

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376

Publisher

Syracuse University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0815652437

ISBN 13

9780815652434

Immigrant Baggage

Morticians, purloined diaries, and other theatrics of exile

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Immigrant Baggage

Morticians, purloined diaries, and other theatrics of exile

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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.

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126

Publisher

Academic Studies PRess

Published Date

ISBN 13

9798887190501

Immigrant Baggage

Morticians, purloined diaries, and other theatrics of exile

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Immigrant Baggage

Morticians, purloined diaries, and other theatrics of exile

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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126

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Academic Studies PRess

Published Date

ISBN 13

9798887190501

Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

The Legacy of Eduard Bagritskii

By: Maxim Shrayer

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Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

The Legacy of Eduard Bagritskii

By: Maxim Shrayer

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Page Count

206

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0742507807

ISBN 13

9780742507807

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Stories

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Stories

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Page Count

154

Publisher

Syracuse University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0815651058

ISBN 13

9780815651055

Leaving Russia

A Jewish Story

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Leaving Russia

A Jewish Story

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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376

Publisher

Syracuse University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0815652437

ISBN 13

9780815652434

Waiting For America

A Story of Emigration

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Waiting For America

A Story of Emigration

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Syracuse University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0815651805

ISBN 13

9780815651802

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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Page Count

1186

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317476956

ISBN 13

9781317476955

The World of Nabokov's Stories

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

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The World of Nabokov's Stories

By: Maxim D. Shrayer

A century after his birth, Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) remains controversial, provocative, and "cool." Yet while he receives acclaim as a major American writer, few of his admirers in the West know the unique place he occupies in his native Russian tradition. In this comprehensive study of Nabokov's short fiction, Maxim D. Shrayer explores how Nabokov eclipsed the achievements of the great Russian masters of the short story, Anton Chekhov and Ivan Bunin, with whom he maintained a dialogic relationship even as he became--in exile from Russia and his native tradition--an American writer. Drawing on Nabokov's unpublished manuscripts and letters, Shrayer analyzes the paradigms of Nabokov's poetics and tests them in studies of representative stories. He investigates Nabokov's dialogue with Chekhov and his rivalry with Bunin. This in-depth analysis places Nabokov's short fiction in the main line of his writing career. Through references to all of Nabokov's stories, as well as to many novels and discursive writings, from the early emigre works of the 1920s to the late American works of the 1970s, Shrayer delineates the principal historical and cultural contexts that shaped Nabokov's development. Most importantly, he reveals the metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic concerns that shaped one of the most significant bodies of modern fiction.

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Page Count

396

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292777566

ISBN 13

9780292777569

Book's by Maxim Shrayer

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

Waiting For America

Waiting For America

A Russian Immigrant

A Russian Immigrant

A Russian Immigrant

A Russian Immigrant

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Leaving Russia

Leaving Russia

Immigrant Baggage

Immigrant Baggage

Immigrant Baggage

Immigrant Baggage

Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

Russian Poet/Soviet Jew

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam

Leaving Russia

Leaving Russia

Waiting For America

Waiting For America

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry

The World of Nabokov's Stories

The World of Nabokov's Stories

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