In Memory of Memory

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With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova 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 Dipping into various forms - essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue and historical documents - Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.

Reviews

Stepanovas tour de force blends memoir, literary criticism, essay and fiction. Although this is a personal and intimate work using photographs, postcards and diaries, it succeeds in mining a universal theme in contemporary Russian cultural life: how does a family or a country process the events of the past 100 years
Viv Groskop,Guardian

A brilliant evocation of the last years of the Soviet Union, extending deep into the past. In a work that crosses the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction, Russian poet and journalist Stepanova recounts the lives of her ancestors, rural Russian Jews who, on moving to Moscow, could never quite go home again.Apart from delivering a mine of family and national history, Stepanova exercises a well-honed sense of the apposite literary allusion (The chimneys in the view from the window resembled flowerpots, Kafka said something similar about them). Stretching from the days before Lenin took power to the Doctors Plot and the collapse of the USSR and beyond, Stepanovas book is lyrical and philosophical throughout.A remarkable work of the imagination and, yes, memory.
Kirkus,starred review

This remarkable account of the authors Russian-Jewish family expands into a reflection on the role of art and ethics in informing memory. Stepanova is both sensitive and rigorous.
New Yorker

A luminous, rigorous, and mesmerizing interrogation of the relationship between personal history, family history, and capital-H History. I couldnt 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 Memoryhas that trick of feeling both completely original and already classic, and I confidently expect this translation to bring Maria Stepanova a rabid fan base on the order of the one she already enjoys in Russia.
Elif Batuman, author ofThe Idiot

There is simply no book in contemporary Russian literature likeIn Memory of Memory. A microcosm all its own, it is an inimitable journey through a family history which, as the reader quickly realizes, becomes a much larger quest than yet another captivating family narrative. Why Because it asks us if history can be examined at all, yes, but does so with incredible lyricism and fearlessness. Because Stepanova teaches us to find beauty where no one else sees it. Because Stepanova teaches us to show tenderness towards the tiny, awkward, missed details of our beautiful private lives. Because she shows us that in the end our hidden strangeness is what makes us human. This, I think, is what makes her a truly major European writer. I am especially grateful to Sasha Dugdale for her precise and flawless translation which makes this book such a joy to read in English. This is a voice to live with.
Ilya Kaminsky, author ofDeaf Republic

Dazzling erudition and deep empathy come together in Maria Stepanovas 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 Memoryis a poetic appraisal of the ways the stories of others are the fabric of our history.
Esther Kinsky, author ofGrove

Extraordinary a work of haunting power, grace and originality
Philippe Sands, author ofEast West Street

The poet Maria StepanovasIn Memory of Memory, beautifully translated by Sasha Dugdale, is a deeply intelligent quest for the significance of minutiae that survive while grand narratives of history sweep over them. It makes for powerful and magical reading, reminiscent of NabokovsSpeak Memory. Time and again the sheer richness of the task sustains us and drives us on. This is a wholly marvellous book that extends our knowledge of all that is valued and lost.
George Szirtes, author ofThe Photographer at Sixteen

Author Bio

Maria Stepanova is a poet, essayist, journalist and the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. She has received several Russian and international literary awards (including the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship). In Memory of Memory, a documentary novel, won Russia's Bolshaya Kniga Award in 2018. Her collection of poems, War and the Beasts and the Animals, is published by Bloodaxe in Sasha Dugdale's translation in 2021. Stepanova is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online independent crowd-sourced journal Colta.ru, which covers the cultural, social and political reality of contemporary Russia.