Nina Berberova

The versatile Nina Berberova (1901-93) wrote in many genres, including poetry, prose, biography, literary criticism, translations, and plays. Her 1969 autobiography Kursiv mo| (Eng. The Italics Are Mine), in which she recorded her experiences of life in Russia during the Revolution and in emigration, is highly regarded as an eyewitness account of historic events. In 1922 she left St. Petersburg, eloping with the poet Vladislav Khodasevich. The couple wandered around Europe and finally settled in Paris. Eventually, Berberova emigrated to the United States, where she taught at Yale and Princeton. Her peripatetic life made her a valuable observer of the emigre's reaction of loneliness and rootlessness in response to change. [Read more]

The Tattered Cloak and Other Novels
Vintage, 1991 (PhP 100.00)
First published in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and now translated into English for the first time, these powerfully evocative short novels by a Russian emigre now in her nineties resurrect the wistful, shabby-genteel society that a generation of Russians created in Parisian exile. Whether they are intellectuals or laundresses, whether they construct philosophies in country houses or get drunk at rickety kitchen tables, pursue shady business deals or a parade of disappointing lovers, Nina Berberova's characters are wry, eloquent, and unforgettable. Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz.