"The tantalizing title, Dinner with Stalin, by Russian-American writer David Shrayer-Petrov holds out the promise of a captivating read. This collection of 14 stories delivers on that promise, revealing Shrayer-Petrov’s mastery as a storyteller."—Hadassah Magazine
"These fourteen stories by the acclaimed master of Jewish-Russian fiction are set in the former USSR, Western Europe, and America. Dinner with Stalin features Soviet Jews grappling with issues of identity, acculturation, and assimilation. Shrayer-Petrov explores aspects of antisemitism and persecution, problems of mixed marriages, dilemmas of conversion, and the survival of Jewish memory. Both an author and a physician, Shrayer-Petrov examines his subjects through the double lenses of medicine and literature. He writes about Russian Jews who, having suffered in the former Soviet Union, continue to cultivate their sense of cultural Russianness, even as they and especially their children assimilate and increasingly resemble American Jews. Shrayer-Petrov's stories also bear witness to the ways Jewish immigrants from the former USSR interact with Americans of other identities and creeds, notably with Catholics and Muslims. Not only lovers of Jewish and Russian writing but all discriminating readers will delight in Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories."—Jewish Book Council
"An important contribution to Jewish-Russian fiction."—Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews
Description
These fourteen stories by the acclaimed master of Jewish-Russian fiction are set in the former USSR, Western Europe, and America. Dinner with Stalin features Soviet Jews grappling with issues of identity, acculturation, and assimilation. Shrayer-Petrov explores aspects of antisemitism and persecution, problems of mixed marriages, dilemmas of conversion, and the survival of Jewish memory. Both an author and a physician, Shrayer-Petrov examines his subjects through the double lenses of medicine and literature. He writes about Russian Jews who, having suffered in the former Soviet Union, continue to cultivate their sense of cultural Russianness, even as they—and especially their children—assimilate and increasingly resemble American Jews. Shrayer-Petrov’s stories also bear witness to the ways Jewish immigrants from the former USSR interact with Americans of other identities and creeds, notably with Catholics and Moslems. Not only lovers of Jewish and Russian writing but all discriminating readers will delight in Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories.
About the Author
David Shrayer-Petrov, a well-known contemporary Russian-American writer and medical scientist, was born in Leningrad in 1936 and immigrated to the United States in 1987. He has published twenty-five books in his native Russian, most recently the novel The Story of My Beloved. Shrayer-Petrov’s books of fiction in English include Jonah and Sarah: Jewish Stories of Russia and America and Autumn in Yalta: A Novel and Three Stories.
Maxim D. Shrayer, the author’s son and translator, is a professor at Boston College and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow. His books include An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature and Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story.
April 2014