Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - List of Books by Maxim D. Shrayer

Shrayer, Maxim D. (; born June 5, 1967, Moscow, USSR) is a bilingual author and scholar. A professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College, Shrayer has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited more than ten books in English and Russian. He has translated into English works by over forty writers, including two books of fiction by his father, the writer David Shrayer-Petrov (?????-??????, ?????), which Shrayer edited and cotranslated. A noted scholar of Vladimir Nabokov and Jewish-Russian literature, Shrayer received the National Jewish Book Award (2007) for his two-volume Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of a Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry."

Unlike many representatives of the so-called “new wave” of Russian-American writing, Maxim D. Shrayer had written and published extensively in his native Russian prior to having made a transition to writing prose predominantly in English. Shrayer began to write poetry and prose in his native Russian at the age of eighteen and subsequently contributed it to Russian-language magazine abroad and in the former USSR. His Russian-language poetry has been gathered in three collections. At Brown University Shrayer majored in comparative literature and literary translation and studied fiction writing with John Hawkes. Around 1995, the year when he received a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Yale University, Shrayer transitioned to writing creative prose in English. His stories, essays and memoirs, have since appeared in American, Canadian, and British magazines, among them Agni, Kenyon Review, and Southwest Review. Shrayer's literary memoir "Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration" appeared in 2007 and was enthusiastically received by the critics. Of Waiting for America Sam Coale wrote in The Providence Journal that “[t]he glory of this book lies in Shrayer’s sinuous, neo-Proustian prose, beautifully fluid and perceptive with its luminous shocks of recognition, landscapes, descriptions and asidesTales and teller mesmerize and delight.” Shrayer's collection of stories, Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, was published in 2009. Of Yom Kippur in Amsterdam Leah Strauss wrote in Booklist: "This intricate, thoughtful collection explores the inexorable complexities of relationships and religionShrayer’s eight delicate stories trace his characters’ diverse struggles against the limits of tradition and culture."

Shrayer lives in Chestnut Hill, Mass. with his wife Dr. Karen E. Lasser, a medical researcher, and their two daughters.

Books   more

Selected Interviews   more

Selected News Features   more

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Maxim D. Shrayer", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 11
This author currently has no books in our system. Browse for Books