National Book Award for Translated Literature
Aetherial Worlds: Stories
A story collection where Russian reality, memory, reverie, and fantasy cross into one another. Dreams of a dead father, fantasies in an American town, a disintegrating marriage, and a child's religious vision turn everyday details into entrances to other worlds through humor and lyricism.
Work Information
The fantasies hidden inside ordinary life illuminate memory, politics, and loneliness.
Tatyana Tolstaya's Aetherial Worlds, translated by Anya Migdal and published by Knopf, is an English-language collection of stories. Chekhovian emotional insight, Gogolian satire, and poetic observation overlap as the stories move through memories of Leningrad, immigrant dislocation, and attachments to home and art. The collection does not evade the weight of reality; it transforms that weight into fantasy.
Review Summaries
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The collection is valued for freely blending fantasy and fact, essayistic reflection and narrative drive. Though difficult to classify, the stories are received as surprising and rich because of their vivid details and confident voice.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 2018-03-20
- Pages
- 256 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.96 x 2.59 x 21.72 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781524732776
- ISBN-10
- 9781524732776
- Price
- 6165 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Short Stories/Single Author
“Playful and poetic . . . A foxy, original writer. Memory fuses with wonder, and wonder with worship." — The Wall Street Journal “Marvelously vivid, perfectly tuned. . . Tolstaya is well known in Russia as a brilliant and caustic political critic, but her memories of her Soviet childhood have a tender, personal quality.” — The New York Times Book Review “Grimly hilarious ... Everything in this generous writer’s hands is vivid and alive …Tolstaya is divinely quotable—slangy, indignant, lyrical, crude...It’s all sublime...the swerve and cackle, the breeziness and dark depths...the torrents of language and the offhand perfect touch…She has been compared to Chekhov. Absurd...Tolstaya barrels by him and knocks him in the ditch.” —Joy Williams, Bookforum From one of modern Russia's finest writers, a spellbinding collection of eighteen stories, her first to be translated into English in more than twenty years. Ordinary realities and yearnings to transcend them lead to miraculous other worlds in this dazzling collection of stories. A woman's deceased father appears in her dreams with clues about the afterlife; a Russian professor in a small American town constructs elaborate fantasies during her cigarette break; a man falls in love with a marble statue as his marriage falls apart; a child glimpses heaven through a stained-glass window. With the emotional insight of Chekhov, the surreal satire of Gogol, and a unique blend of humor and poetry all her own, Tolstaya transmutes the quotidian into aetherial alternatives. These tales, about politics, identity, love, and loss, cut to the core of the Russian psyche, even as they lay bare human universals. Tolstaya's characters--seekers all--are daydreaming children, lonely adults, dislocated foreigners in unfamiliar lands. Whether contemplating the strategic complexities of delivering telegrams in Leningrad or the meditative melancholy of holiday aspic, vibrant inner lives and the grim elements of existence are registered in equally sharp detail in a starkly bleak but sympathetic vision of life on earth. A unique collection from one of the first women in years to rank among Russia's most important writers.
Tatyana Tolstaya lives in Moscow. For twelve years, she was the cohost of The School for Scandal , a popular talk show on Russian television covering culture and politics. She is also the cofounder of a creative writing academy in Moscow. She has written for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker . Five of her books, including her novel The Slynx , have been translated into English. Translated by Anya Migdal.
Reviews
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"Meanwhile, I found that the second world, having first appeared to me in darkness, was here to stay; it turned out to be a multifaceted underside of so-called reality, a dungeon full of treasure, an aetherial world through the looking glass, a mysterious box with passcodes to all enigmas, an address book with the exact coordinates of those who never existed." • "The chopped-up legs in the shopping bag are pulling your arm down, and it seems as if at the very last moment they’ll refuse to get into the elevator. They’ll twitch, break free, and run away, clacking across the ceramic tiles: clippity-clop, clippity-clop, clippity-clop." • This short story collection has embedded itself inside my heart. In a mix of fiction and nonfiction, Tolstaya writes the most divine short stories that sublime the mundane. In "Aspic" making aspics becomes a complete sensory experience that transcends reality. It is as if the words were in motion. The bounteous language she uses rolls in your mouth, titillating every little string of your heart. It's a symphony of words and images, almost a cinematic experience. In an acerbic tone, Tolstaya's narrator delivers her reflections always in the most trenchant, but also the most perspicacious way. • Tolstaya made my heart sing from the very first page. It felt like a revelation. I am forever spellbound by her words and by this book. • 5/5 ~ #fridayinaprilbookreviews
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Beautiful, open , sensitive, lyric, poetic. Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds, On the golden Porch, The Slynx, Sleepwalker in the Fog, Pushkin's Children, all masterpieces. Once I read , The Slynx, I could not help myself.
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We all have our internal paradoxes. One of mine is the coexistence of a long-standing disconnect with blood relatives and a fascination with my cultural heritage. Both sides of my family have extensive roots in Eastern Europe, so, while perusing a list of women authors of weird short fiction, I happened upon Tatyana Tolstaya, a marvelous Russian writer whose Russianness is an intimate part of her work. Her stories are the sort where I can never tell if she’s writing about actual experiences or artfully weaving herself into her aetherial fiction. Perhaps both. There’s a wonder, a melancholy, and an edge to all of these stories, even the most mundane has an otherworldly feel, that tastes distinctly Russian to me. I loved them and will be seeking out more of her work.
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The dreaded Amazon 3 star review. If something earns a 4 or 5 star review you know exactly what the reviewer thought of it. If he assigns a 1 or 2 star review there is always a chance that he has a personal issue with the book and is being petulant, or feels betrayed in some way because the book was not what he thought. But 3 stars? Right in the middle of the road, not quite bad enough to stop reading but unable to say that he really enjoyed it. And that is what I think of this book. If you were trapped somewhere with this book and few or no other books I would suggest that you read it. But if you have access to a library or money to buy books I could recommend hundreds of other books that I think you should read first. The stories seem mostly about real event's in this Russian woman's life. I didn't find the stories more than moderately interesting and her style was not all that appealing. There was one story that was most definitely fantasy, which I was looking forward to. But it never grabbed me. It was typical and I couldn't help thinking how any number of authors would have done it better. I do think 3 stars are warranted; perhaps you will enjoy it more than I did. If you want to read an author talk honestly about their life I recommend that you read the My Struggle Series by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Those books are absolutely masterful. They are unlike anything I have ever read and are subtly addictive. I have to mete them out because I don't want to run out of them.
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Fascinating. The very short story “Aspic” is one of the best I have ever read.