Maxim D. Shrayer reading

Please join us on November 18, 2019 for a reading by Maxim D. Shrayer, internationally acclaimed author of the memoirs Waiting for America and Leaving Russia and of the story collection Yom Kippur in Amsterdam. Shrayer’s new book of fiction, A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas, explores the lives of immigrants from Russia and the former USSR. A Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College, Shrayer is the winner of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award, and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow. He directs the Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Shrayer and his wife and daughters divide their time between Brookline and Chatham, MA. Learn more at www.shrayer.com.

Regina Khidkel, RACC director, is the curator of the Russian Reading Series at Yorkville Library.

NYPL event listing

PRAISE

“Forget all the slapstick, Moscow-on-the-Hudson, burlesque treatments of Jewish Russian émigré life you’ve ever read. If you want the honest, beautifully rendered, and deeply compelling truth about what it’s like to be a Russian immigrant in America, these three braided novellas by the very talented Maxim D. Shrayer are all you need.”
— Eileen Pollack, author of The Bible of Dirty Jokes 

“Maxim D. Shrayer’sbeautiful and haunting troika of novellas ... limn the shifting patterns of contemporary Russian-Jewish immigrant experience with tenderness and charm.”
— Jonathan Wilson, author of Kick and Run: Memoir with Soccer Ball

"A Russian Immigrant is a loving farewell to things past and disintegrated. ... The sensitive, intelligent and compassionate young Simon Reznikov who never misses his chance to assert his Russian-American biculturalism―and his Jewishness―or follow his heart in pursuit of romantic love, is a joy to observe as he moves from adolescence to early adulthood. Shrayer’s protagonist is bound to take pride of place among other renowned characters of coming-of-age fiction and beyond.”                                      ―Pavel Lembersky, author of Here’s Looking At You, Kid

All RACC events are FREE

RACC’s programs and events are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Cojeco and Tianaderrah Foundation.