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Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the Book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Lara Vapnyar
Book Reviewed by:This article relates to Memoirs of a Muse
Lara Vapnyar
emigrated from
Russia to New
York in 1994 and
began publishing
short stories in
English in 2002.
She lives on
Staten Island
and is pursuing
a Ph.D. in
comparative
literature at
CUNY Graduate
Center. The
inspiration for
Memoirs of a
Muse came
from her
graduate
studies. One of
her options for
a PhD project
was to translate
an important but
previously not
translated, work
into English,
and she chose
A Stranger and
an Intimate,
a novella
written by
Dostovesky's
mistresss,
Apollinaria
Suslova, which
tells a story of
two characters
who are thinly
disguised
versions of
Suslova and
Dostoevsky.
When asked what
the hardest part
about emigrating
to the USA was
for her, she
says that it was
the inability to
find a job that
she could do
well - "not even
prestigious, or
lucrative, or
even something
interesting, but
something that
would give
satisfaction".
It looks like
she's found a
job that she
does well now,
and one that is
likely to become
considerably
more lucrative
as her
reputation and
talents develop!
Interesting
note: Lara
Vapnyar and
Irene Nemirovsky
(author of
Suite Francaise
- see above)
have something
in common in
that they both
wrote their
first books in a
foreign tongue
within 10 years
of emigrating
from Russia.
This "beyond the book article" relates to Memoirs of a Muse. It originally ran in April 2006 and has been updated for the
April 2007 paperback edition.
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