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 emigre 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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