Leaving Russia ― A Jewish Story

The author, a prolific author and professor of Russian, English, and Jewish studies at Boston College, celebrates nostalgia and poignancy in this memoir of struggle, fraught with contradictions. Essentially an account of one Russian Jewish family's attempts to leave the country they love--but one that does not love them back, and the tension between the two impulses gives a backdrop of bittersweetness to this story. Shrayer begins with his childhood and slow realization of his family's refusenik status--with all its consequences. From discovery of his difference from his classmates, to travels about Russia, to Moscow, to the Black Sea, to a slow and torturous--yet rewarding--education, the poignancy, the feeling of what-might-have-been, permeates the pages. Interspersed with bits and pieces of family history, and tales and details placing one family's struggle into a wider context of pure Jewish cultural blues, this tale reads like factual poetry, and there is enough universal truths there despite the deluge of particularities--or perhaps, because of them. Annotation c2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Maxim D. Shrayer is a professor at Boston College and a bilingual writer and translator. Shrayer has authored ten books, among them the memoir Waiting for America, the collection Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, and the Holocaust study I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah.