Out of Russia

Introduction                                                                                                                            5
 
Andreï Makine: “Seeing Russia in French”                                                                            29
A Life Shrouded in Mystery                                                                                         31
Russianness as a Cliché                                                                                              37
Bilingualism and Translation in Le testament français                                               44
Between Frenchness and Russianness                                                                        57
Allegories of Audience and Authorship                                                                       66
 
Russianness for German Consumption                                                                                   74
Wladimir Kaminer: “The Russian from Central Casting”                                         75
Militärmusik  and the Picaresque Self                                                             89
The Appeal of Banality                                                                                                97
Kaminer’s Competition: Lena Gorelik and Alina Bronsky                                         104
“Caught Between Mirrors:” Vladimir Vertlib                                                            119
 
Boris Zaidman: A “Russian” in Israel                                                                         129
 
Gary Shteyngart: The New Immigrant Chic                                                                           138
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook                                                                           139
Absurdistan                                                                                                                 149
Repainting Gogol’s “Portrait”                                                                                   157
Russian and Jewish Responses                                                                                   175
“All Things to All People”                                                                                          183
 
The Rise of the “Russian Debutantes”                                                                                   195
The Immigrant Bildungsroman in Fragments:
 David Bezmozgis and Ellen Litman                                                                           196
The Erotic Charm of Russianness:  Lara Vapnyar and Irina Reyn                            216
Multiple Identities of the Post-Immigrant: Anya Ulinich and Sana Krasikov  242
A “Russian Writer in America:” Olga Grushin                                                          261
 
Conclusion                                                                                                                              274
Bibliography                                                                                                                           287
Notes                                                                                                                                       300