Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature

This definitive and comprehensive anthology of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, nonfiction and poetry by eighty Jewish-Russian writers explores both timeless themes and specific tribulations of a people’s history.

Maxim D. Shrayer, translingual author, scholar and translator, was born in Moscow and emigrated in 1987 with his parents, David Shrayer-Petrov and Emilia Shrayer. He is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College and Director of the Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry at the Davis Center, Harvard University. Shrayer is the author and editor of over 15 books of criticism and biography, fiction and nonfiction, and poetry. His books include The World of Nabokov’s Stories, Russian Poet/Soviet Jew, Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, Bunin and Nabokov: A History of Rivalry (which was a bestseller in Russia), Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story, and, most recently, Antisemitism and the Decline of Russian Village Prose and Of Politics and Pandemics: Songs of a Russian Immigrant. He is the editor of An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature and Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature. Shrayer is a Guggenheim Fellow and the winner of a National Jewish Book Award. Shrayer’s works have appeared in ten languages.Maxim D. Shrayer, a bilingual author, scholar and translator, is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College and Director of the Project on Russian & Eurasian Jewry at Harvard’s Davis Center. Born in Moscow in 1967 to a writer’s family, Shrayer emigrated to the United States in 1987. He has authored and edited fifteen books in English and Russian, among them the internationally acclaimed memoirs Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story and Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration, the story collection Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, and the Holocaust study I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah, and the travelogue With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia. Shrayer is the recipient of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship. Visit Shrayer’s website at www.shrayer.com.

“This anthology is a major contribution to our understanding of key role played by Russian Jews in both Russian and Jewish culture. It is absolutely indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in the subject.” —Samuel D. Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History, Trinity College and author of The Distinctive Life of East European Jewry

“There is no living scholar better-equipped to examine the legacy of Jewish-Russian literature than Shrayer. His creative and editorial work in this field has both sustained and re-vivified its legacy for future generations.” —Holli Levitsky, Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies Program, Loyola Marymount University and editor of Literature of Exile and Displacement

“Moving beyond all essentialist and cultural definitions, Maxim D. Shrayer points to the elusive quality that makes this literature specifically Jewish and this anthology required reading for any Russianist. The quality Shrayer identifies lies in the truth this literature tells about Jewish history and life—the truth which a religious Jew may not look for and a non-Jew may not see.” —Roman Katsman, Professor of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar Ilan University and author of author of Nostalgia for a Foreign Land: Studies in Russian-Language Literature in Israel

“Stunning work, Maxim D. Shrayer’s Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature … is not to be missed by anyone interested in the meeting of the Jewish and Russian spirit.” —Robert Louis Jackson, B.E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University and author of Dialogues with Dostoevsky

“For scholars of Jewish and Russian literature, Voices of Jewish Russian Literature is an indispensable vademecum.” —Patricia Herlihy, Professor Emerita of History, Brown University and author of Odessa: A History, 1794-1914

“This is an enlightening, well-edited anthology, a partial answer to an eternally vexed question: what does it mean to be a writer with talent and Jewish blood in Russia?” —Ellendea Proffer Teasley, MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of Ardis Publishers