num_pages: 432
description: With the death of her aunt the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs old postcards letters diaries and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of an entire century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm steady hands these shards tell the story of an ordinary family that somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. The familys pursuit of a quiet civilized ordinary lifeduring such atrocious timesis itself a strange odyssey.In dialogue with thinkers like Roland Barthes W. G. Sebald Susan Sontag and Osip Mandelstam In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken poetic voice. Dipping into various genresessay fiction memoir travelogue and historyStepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers a bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.
language: English
title: In Memory of Memory
publisher: New Directions