Books by Maxim D Shrayer
The bilingual author and scholar Maxim D Shrayer was born in Moscow in 1967, to a Jewish-Russian family, and immigrated to the United States in 1987. Shrayer is Professor of Russian, English and Jewish Studies at Boston College, where he co-founded the Jewish Studies Program. He has authored and edited over ten books of criticism, biography, non-fiction, fiction, poetry and translation. Shrayer has edited and co-translated three volumes of fiction by his father, David Shrayer-Petrov. In 2007 he received the National Jewish Book Award for An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature and the Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on Jewish poets and the Shoah.
An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature
by Maxim D Shrayer
This anthology is the winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award, Eastern European Studies. For over two hundred years, a distinctive Jewish-Russian culture has been part of the ferment and flourishing of world culture. This magnificent anthology introduces readers for the first time to the full range of the Jewish-Russian literary canon, with stories and excerpts from novels, essays, memoirs, and poems by more than 130 Jewish writers who worked in the Russian language, both in Russia and in the great emigrations. The selections were chosen both for their literary quality and because they illuminate questions of Jewish history, status, and identity. Each author is extensively profiled. With a comprehensive general introduction, chronological introductions, and headnotes by the editor, historical surveys by John D. Klier of University College, London, and extensive bibliographies, this anthology provides an encyclopedic history of Jewish-Russian culture.
Yom Kippur in Amsterdam
by Maxim D Shrayer
"Throughout "Yom Kippur in Amsterdam," Maxim D. Shrayer gives a modern Jewish twist to Shakespeare's dictum, "To thine own self be true." This recently published collection of short stories depicts the romantic struggles of Jewish-American immigrants from the former Soviet Union in terms of identity and intermarriage. Yet the book avoids polemics. Instead, it beckons the reader to conversation like an open café."- The Jewish Advocate --The Jewish Advocate
Waiting for America
by Maxim D Shrayer
"The glory of this book lies in Shrayer's sinuous, neo-Proustian prose, beautifully fluid and perceptive with its luminous shocks of recognition, landscapes, descriptions and asides. It illuminates its quarries, circles and pounces upon them in sumptuous ease. Tales and teller mesmerize and delight."
Interviews with Maxim D Shrayer
The Best Vasily Grossman Books, recommended by Maxim D Shrayer
The Soviet writer bore witness to the horrors of Russia’s World War Two and the Shoah — and deserves a place in literary history, says scholar Maxim D Shrayer. He recommends the best books by and about Vasily Grossman.
Best Vladimir Nabokov Books, recommended by Maxim D Shrayer
Bilingual author and translator with his pick of the five must-reads by – and about – Nabokov. Says a revisionist biography of the writer is due, which comes to terms with the Jewish influence on his work
