An exciting new Russian writer explores terra incognita: the still-living margins of history.
With the death of her aunt, the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century.
In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms—essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue, and historical documents—Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.
Praise for In Memory of Memory:
“In Memory of Memory is a multifaceted essay on the nature of remembering.”
—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Maria Stepanova is one of Russia’s most influential cultural figures.”
—The Moscow Times
In Memory of Memory is far and wide the best book written in Russian in 2017. Stepanova writes in Russian like no one else.” —Afischa, Russia
“One of the most important texts written in Russian in recent years. Stepanova's book gives grounds for claiming the triumphant return of Russian literature to the world literary scene.” —Lev Oborin, Russian poet, critic and translator
“Stepanova has given new life to the skaz technique of telling a story through the scrambled speech of an unreliable narrator, using manic wordplay and what one critic called ‘a carnival of images.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“With its ingenious style In Memory of Memory is a book that comes at the right time.”
—Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland
“In Memory of Memory is so much more than a novel: it is a poetically concentrated, unexaggeratedly formulated reflection on the terms of the possibility, today, to affirm one’s own familial history, especially from a Russian-Jewish perspective.” —NDR, Germany
“[Stepanova writes in] a fragmentary, self-critically reflective and… heavily poetic language.”
—Berliner Zeitung, Germany
“The book is a direct and at the same time deeply moving account that reveals the author’s personal experience of having the weight of the dead and their remembrance on her shoulders in the midst of the disruptive entanglements of greater history. Oh, what a book.”
—Expressen, Sweden
“It seems as though Stepanova was shaking a kaleidoscope to get a coherent image, only to shake it again… A unique combination of earnestness, precise language and uninhibited tenderness.” —Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden
“It’s been a long time since I have read such a rich, generous book. At once whirling and lucid, strict and delicate, funny and moving. In Memory of Memory is nothing less than a tender masterwork of beauty and intelligence.” —Sydsvenska Dagbladet, Sweden
“Maria Stepanova has turned the dead into her co-authors. The result is a book that was unknown in Russian before – and seeks more of its kind in other languages.” —Novaja Gaseta, Russia
“A great literary reconstruction, which has created a whole new genre and sounds the relation between memory, time, and history.” —Literratura, Russia
“One of the most important texts written in Russian in recent years. Stepanova's book gives grounds for claiming the triumphant return of Russian literature to the world literary scene.”
— Lev Oborin (Russian poet, critic and translator)
