National Book Award for Translated Literature
In Memory of Memory: A Romance
An essayistic book that reconstructs Russian family history from photographs, letters, and diaries, turning memory itself into the subject of inquiry.
Work Information
An essayistic book that reconstructs Russian family history from fragments.
An essayistic book that reconstructs Russian family history from photographs, letters, and diaries, turning memory itself into the subject of inquiry.
Book Information
- Publisher
- New Directions
- Published
- 2021-02-09
- Pages
- 432 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.21 x 3.05 x 20.57 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780811228831
- ISBN-10
- 0811228835
- Price
- 4434 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Family Saga
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 Memory of Memory
Poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist, Maria Stepanova is the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. Her poetry collections Holy Winter 20/21 and War of the Beasts and the Animals were Poetry Book Society Translation Choices and winners of PEN Translates awards, and War of the Beasts and the Animals was also shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021. Her novel In Memory of Memory won Russia's Big Book Award in 2018 and was published in English in Sasha Dugdale's translation. She was awarded the Berman Literature Prize for In Memory of Memory , and was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. Maria Stepanova has received several Russian and international literary awards (including the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship). In 2022 she was awarded the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding 2023 for a book of poetry, Mädchen ohne Kleider (Girls Without Clothes) . She founded and was editor-in-chief of the online independent crowd-sourced journal Colta.ru, which engaged with the cultural, social and political reality of contemporary Russia until the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine when all dissenting media in Russia were forced to shut down. As a prominent critic of Putin's regime, she had to leave Russia and is now living in exile. Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator. Her sixth book of poetry is The Strongbox , published by Carcanet (UK) in 2024. Deformations (2020) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot and Derek Walcott Prizes. Her long poem "Joy" won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem of 2016. Dugdale's translation of Maria Stepanova's prose work In Memory of Memory was shortlisted for the International Booker and won the MLA Lois Roth Award. She has translated two of Stepanova's poetry collections and work by a number of Russian-language women poets, including Elena Shvarts and Marina Tsvetaeva. For many years she specialized in translating Russian-language new writing for theaters in the UK and US, including the New York Public Theater and the UK's Royal Court Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company.
Reviews
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Je decouvre une ecrivain intelligent et profond
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It took me too long to finish only because each line was thought provoking and rang true to my own determination to hold precious my family's past.
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It took a while for me to get around to reading this: I read some reviews that said the book was too long. Don't believe them. This book is voluptuous and meandering, yes. It is written in the style of an assemblage by Joseph Cornell (the subject of one of the chapters), it's true. But the narrative current of this book is strong and sweeps you along experientially and almost spiritually that is both hugely moving and greatly satisfying.
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Amazon needs to improve its suggestions. "What did you use this product for?" is hardly a good hint for how to write a review about a superb, touching book. Wonderfully translated as well. I used this product to expand my mind.
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Won't download