Tag: American Fiction on Russia

Jennifer Eremeeva’s Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

As a response to our first publicity efforts for this blog, Yelena and I received a tweet from Jennifer Eremeeva, an expat who moved from the US to Russia. In 2014, she published a book of short stories about her protagonist, also named Jennifer, who was a Russia super-fan in the 1980s, started learning the language and traveling around the Soviet Union on the eve of its dissolution–then met a man she fell in love with, and married him, and ended up staying for twenty years.

I’ve just started reading this book on Amazon, and this seems a page-turner. Jennifer is a keen observer and a natural storyteller, with a sharp sense of humor and attention to the nuance of language and culture. And she’s got so many interesting stories to tell!

Author: Jennifer Eremeeva

Title: Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow

Publisher: Small Batch Books

Pub date: February 3, 2014

Olga Zilberbourg on Michael Honig’s The Senility of Vladimir P.

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

“Nikolai Sheremetev, the protagonist of British novelist’s Michael Honig’s second book, is a Moscow nurse. For six years, he’s been looking after a private patient suffering from dementia. The patient’s condition is deteriorating. Prior to his illness, Vladimir P. had been a president of Russia.”

https://www.thecommononline.org/review-the-senility-of-vladimir-putin/?fbclid=IwAR0wjiXM582L9x-iBEY33OQKvmvJy5LAF4r4gpwErg3SZTeM743IhYvHPI4

 

In Lara Prescott’s ‘The Secrets We Kept,’ the CIA takes a novel approach to Cold War spycraft – The Washington Post

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

The publication history behind Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago provides the backbone of this debut novel. Joan Frank, reviewing for The Washington Post, remarks:

Significantly, these are women’s stories. Pasternak’s, while not marginal, is told by his longtime mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya — she who inspired “Zhivago’s” famous romantic lead, Lara (for whom Prescott happens to be named). Sent twice to a Gulag labor camp (described in horrific detail) as a result of her affiliation with him, Olga’s own astonishing account nearly eclipses his.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-lara-prescotts-the-secrets-we-kept-the-cia-takes-a-novel-approach-to-cold-war-spycraft/2019/09/13/1b7f8ff4-d633-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html

Janet Fitch’s Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 1 Comment

This book is a sequel to The Revolution Of Marina M about a poet who comes of age during the Russian Revolution: “The epic journey that began with The Revolution of Marina M. concludes in Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, in which passionate young poet, lover, and idealist Marina Makarova emerges as a woman in full during the transformative years of the Russian Revolution. Having undergone unimaginable hardship, she’s now at the height of her creative power and understanding, living the shared life of poetry–when the revolution finally reveals its true direction for the future.”

Published on July 2, 2019 by Little, Brown & Company

Editor: Asya Muchnick at Little, Brown

Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins Group