From Library Journal\nParis in the Thirties and Forties provides the setting for these six short novels detailing the lives, losses, and loves of Russian emigres in a style reminiscent of Chekhov. The Paris of Berberova (now 89 and living in the United States since the Fifties) is not a gay or exhilarating place. Instead, her stories of middle-ranking Russian exiles new to poverty are filled with despair for their crumbling old world. Many of her characters meet painful ends through suicide or illness, and a common theme is the fruitless search for love and a little comfort. In the title story a young girl describes a series of losses and descent into poverty experienced by a bureaucrat and his St. Petersburg family. Their eventual arrival in Paris is not the stuff that dreams are made of: "I'm going to Paris. We've come to Paris. . . . But what I saw my first day resembled neither silk nor lace nor champagne." Beautifully told stories, but not for the faint of heart. For serious fiction collections in public and academic libraries. 
- Amy Lewontin, Bentley Coll., Waltham, Mass. 
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.\nLanguage Notes\nText: English (translation) 
Original Language: Russian\nFrom Publishers Weekly\nThose who lament the passing of the golden age of Russian literature may now take heart--the American debut of Russian emigree Berberova (b. 1901) is marked by the psychological profundity, the painterly attention to detail and the exquisite storytelling powers of the masters. In length and scope more like novellas than novels, the six pieces collected here all focus on characters whose heritage has been left in tatters by the Russian Revolution. Accustomed to lives of ease, they are cast into sorely straitened circumstances, taking up residence in Paris or the U.S. (where Berberova herself has lived since 1950), nourishing their nostalgia for the all-important past as they labor as laundresses or clerks, or search for a wealthy lover. Perhaps the most extraordinary work of all is "Atashev in Paris," in which a man from a formerly upper-class family teams up with his late father's second wife to establish himself comfortably in Paris. Becoming a life insurance agent, he sells policies by mouthing metaphysical truisms ("Allow me to inform you of some important news. . . . We are all mortal"), to which he himself is oblivious. Berberova's delicate structure diffuses the irony of her plot, conveying a portrait that is equally sensitive and detached. 
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.\nFrom Kirkus Reviews\nQuintessentially Russian in mood and theme, the collected novellas of 89-year-old Russian migr and former Princeton professor Berberova now make their American debut. Set mainly in Paris, where Berberova, like so many other Russians, lived after the Revolution, the six stories are of men and women ill-prepared for exile and irrevocably shaped by their Russian past. In ``The Resurrection of Mozart,'' the Russian hosts of a party in the French countryside on the eve of the German invasion are relatively prosperous, but the hostess--when asked whom she would choose to resurrect--suggests Mozart, because she connects his name with her earliest childhood and because he lives on as something ``transparent and eternal that might take the place of happiness.'' In ``The Waiter and the Slut,'' the aging Tania, who has lived off men since she came to Paris, moves in with an old migr waiter and decides to take revenge for her unhappy life by inciting him to murder her. Meanwhile, in the longest two pieces- -''The Tattered Cloak'' and ``The Black Pestilence''--a woman and man respectively cannot escape the past. The young woman, who works in a Parisian laundry, is sustained by the story of the legendary ``Tattered Cloak'' told to her in St. Petersburg. And like the diseased pearl earring he must sell, the man in the second story- -despite friendship and an advantageous move to America--is slowly being destroyed

The Tattered Cloak And Other Novels

Literature & Fiction

Nina Berberova

Contemporary

Alfred.A. Knopf

The book by the well-known émigré writer N.N. Berberova (1901-1993) includes her three novels translated into English.

THREE NOVELS VOL 2

World Literature

Chatto&Windus

The Book of Happiness is one of the outstanding novels the great Russian writer Nina Berberova wrote during the years she lived in Paris, and the most autobiographical. "All Berberova's characters-including Berberova herself-live raw, unfurnished lives, in poverty, on the edge of cities, with little sense of belonging-except in moments of epiphany-to their time and in life itself" (The Observer). Such a character is Vera, the protagonist of The Book of Happiness. She is seen first in Paris where she leads a dreary life tied down by a demanding invalid husband. She is summoned to the scene of a suicide, that of her childhood's boon companion, Sam Adler, whose family left Russia in the early days of the revolution and whom Vera has not seen in many years. His death reduces Vera to a flood of tears and memories of the times before Sam's departure, and thoughts about how her life has gone since. Not a cheerful prospect. Berberova spins the story with a wonderful unsentimental poignancy. The Book of Happiness is the second book from New Directions by this fine and unique writer-one who had an overview of the entire 20th century-from pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, through exile in Paris, to the United States where she lived for some forty years before her death in 1993.

The Book of Happiness

Marian Schwartz

New Directions

Hardcover/dust jacket. Small book with tales of the city - St. Petersburg, Russia.

St. Petersburg: Tales of the City (Chronicle Abroad)

LEO TOLSTOY

EDMUND WILSON

Fyodor, Dostoyevsky

john-reed

TATYANA TOLSTAYA

Short Stories & Anthologies

Chronicle Books LLC.

America's premiere literary quarterly explores themes of domination, politics, the public mind, the literary sensibility, and where imagination locks horns with free will. There are poems, stories, essays, gun shows, tennis matches, bad diets, and blizzards. Read curiously. Read bravely. Read more TLR.

The Literary Review: Manifest Destiny

Lawrence Venuti

Paul Ruffin

The Literary Review

Kelly, Cherry

Pablo-neruda

Illan Stavans

R.A. Allen

Michiah Bay Gault

R. G. Evans

Clea Roberts

Erica McAlpine

A.K. Scipioni

David McGlynn

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Aleksandr Blok (Lives & Letters)

Poetry

Carcanet Press

179pages. poche. Poche. La foule attend, avide, suspendue aux lèvres de Maria Nikolaevna. Derrière la cantatrice se tient son accompagnatrice. Sous les feux de la rampe, être dans l'ombre de Maria Nikolaevna lui permet d'entrevoir et d'identifier avec acuité et lucidité tout ce dont elle n'aura jamais que quelques miettes. Sans avenir, sans autre passé qu'une vague enfance dans la ville de N. , sans autre nom que son diminutif, Sonetchka traîne son anonymat et son vide sentimental en retrait de Maria Nikolaevna. Être misérable auquel personne ne prête attention, hormis peut-être celle qu'elle désire ardemment blesser, elle souffre dans l'ombre. Sur fond de révolution, présente en creux dans les bouleversements des habitudes de la haute société pétersbourgeoise, L'Accompagnatrice évoque, avec concision et efficacité, les oscillations d'un esprit mesquin entre la haine et l'amour. Et c'est aussi parce que le lecteur comprend que ce n'est ni par ambition ni par méchanceté, mais à cause d'un manque d'amour immense, que Sonetchka jalouse la beauté et le bonheur, qu'il la plaint plus qu'il ne la méprise. -Sana Tang-Léopold Wauters

L'accompagnatrice (LITTÉRATURE ÉTRANGÈRE)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

J'Ai Lu

120pages. poche. Broché. En quelques scènes où l'économie des moyens renforce l'efficacité du trait, Nina Berberova raconte ici les relations d'une soprano issue de la haute société pétersbourgeoise, avec Sonetchka, son accompagnatrice, bâtarde et pauvre; elle décrit leur exil dans les années qui suivent la révolution d'Octobre, et leur installation à Paris où leur liaison se termine dans le silencieux paroxysme de l'amour et de la haine. Virtuose de l'implicite, Nina Berberova sait tour à tour faire peser sur les rapports de ses personnages l'antagonisme sournois des classes sociales et l'envoûtement de la musique (il y a sur la voix quelques notations inoubliables). Par ce roman serré, violent, subtil, elle fut, en 1985, reçue en France, où elle avait passé plus de vingt ans avant de s'exiler définitivement aux Etats-Unis.

L'Accompagnatrice

Actes-sud

Coffret berberova

Kursiv Moj

AST,Astrel

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Books by Nina Berberova