Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story

Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a memoir of coming-of-age and struggling to leave the USSR. Shrayer chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a Soviet childhood and expresses the dreams and fears of a Jewish family that never gave up its hopes for a better life. Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy's confessional trilogy and Nabokov's autobiography, this is a searing account of the KGB's persecution of refuseniks, a poet's rebellion against totalitarian culture, and Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer's remembrances are set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire's collapse. His story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence. Leaving Russia is a love story in which a young Jew's love is unrequited and his heart is forever broken by his homeland.

Author: Maxim D. Shrayer
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 12/03/2013
Pages: 324
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780815610243
Award: National Jewish Book Award - Finalist

About the Author
Born in Moscow in 1967 in a writer's family, Maxim D. Shrayer is a professor at Boston College and a bilingual writer and translator. Shrayer has authored over ten books, among them, the memoir Waiting for America, the story collection Yam Kippur in Amsterdam, and the Holocaust study I Saw It. Shrayer's Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature won a 2007 National Jewish Book Award, and in 2012, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters. Visit Shrayer's website at www.shrayer.com.