Staff Pick
One of the best books I've read on the paradoxes of memory: how it eludes us even as we draw close to it; how trauma both obscures and sharpens it; how its gaps can trouble us into grief as much as they stir up possibilities for creative processing. Composed of an absorbing assemblage of essay, memoir, family letters, and talismanic objects, Stepanova's familial testament to Jewish life and survival across the war-torn histories of Russia and Ukraine is spellbinding for its refusal to neatly resolve these paradoxes and tensions, opting instead for an attentive listening to the ways in which silence speaks. Recommended By Alexa W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
An exploration of life at the margins of history from one of Russia’s most exciting contemporary writers
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 dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms — essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue, and historical documents — Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.
Review
"A luminous, rigorous, and mesmerizing interrogation of the relationship between personal history, family history, and capital-H History. I couldn't put it down; it felt sort of like watching a hypnotic YouTube unboxing-video of the gift-and-burden that is the twentieth century. In Memory of Memory has that trick of feeling both completely original and already classic, and I confidently expect this translation to bring Maria Stepanova a rabid American fan base on the order of the one she already enjoys in Russia." Elif Batuman
Review
"Dazzling erudition and deep empathy come together in Maria Stepanova’s profound engagement with the power and potential of memory, the mother of all muses. An exploration of the vast field between reminiscence and remembrance, In Memory of Memory is a poetic appraisal of the ways the stories of others are the fabric of our history." Esther Kinsky
Review
"Stepanova has given new life to the skaz technique of telling a story through the scrambled speech of an unreliable narrator, using manic wordplay and what one critic called ‘a carnival of images.’" Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
"Stepanova’s finely crafted debut follows a woman’s lifelong efforts to better understand her ancestors, Russian Jews whose stories fascinated her as a child growing up in the Soviet Union... [an] admirable cross-genre project will intrigue fans of erudite autofiction." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Maria Stepanova, born in Moscow in 1972, is a poet, essayist, and journalist, and editor in chief of the online newspaper Colta. In 2018, she was awarded the Bolshaya Kniga Award for In Memory of Memory.
Sasha Dugdale is a British poet, playwright, and translator.