Description
Title: In Memory of Memory
Author: STEPANOVA MARIA
Illustrator: DUGDALE SASHA (TRANS)
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 03/04/2024
Imprint: FITZCARRALDO
Price: $25.00
Publishing status: Active
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‘Stepanova’s tour de force blends memoir, literary criticism, essay and fiction. Although this is a personal and intimate work using photographs, postcards and diaries, it succeeds in mining a universal theme in contemporary Russian cultural life: how does a family – or a country – process the events of the past 100 years?’Â
- Viv Groskop, Guardian
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‘A brilliant evocation of the last years of the Soviet Union, extending deep into the past. In a work that crosses the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction, Russian poet and journalist Stepanova recounts the lives of her ancestors, rural Russian Jews who, on moving to Moscow, could never quite go home again…. Apart from delivering a mine of family and national history, Stepanova exercises a well-honed sense of the apposite literary allusion (\”\”The chimneys in the view from the window resembled flowerpots, Kafka said something similar about them\”\”). Stretching from the days before Lenin took power to the \”\”Doctor’s Plot\”\” and the collapse of the USSR and beyond, Stepanova’s book is lyrical and philosophical throughout…. A remarkable work of the imagination – and, yes, memory.’
- Kirkus, starred review
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‘This remarkable account of the author’s Russian-Jewish family expands into a reflection on the role of art and ethics in informing memory…. Stepanova is both sensitive and rigorous.’
-Â New Yorker
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‘A luminous, rigorous, and mesmerizing interrogation of the relationship between personal history, family history, and capital-H History. I couldn’t put it down; it felt sort of like watching a hypnotic YouTube unboxing-video of the gift-and-burden that is the twentieth century. In Memory of Memory has that trick of feeling both completely original and already classic, and I confidently expect this translation to bring Maria Stepanova a rabid fan base on the order of the one she already enjoys in Russia.’
- Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
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‘There is simply no book in contemporary Russian literature like In Memory of Memory. A microcosm all its own, it is an inimitable journey through a family history which, as the reader quickly realizes, becomes a much larger quest than yet another captivating family narrative. Why? Because it asks us if history can be examined at all, yes, but does so with incredible lyricism and fearlessness. Because Stepanova teaches us to find beauty where no one else sees it. Because Stepanova teaches us to show tenderness towards the tiny, awkward, missed details of our beautiful private lives. Because she shows us that in the end our hidden strangeness is what makes us human. This, I think, is what makes her a truly major European writer. I am especially grateful to Sasha Dugdale for her precise and flawless translation which makes this book such a joy to read in English. This is a voice to live with.’
- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic
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ISBN: 9781804270585
Dimension: 197mm X 114mm
Pages: 510