Autumn in Yalta ― A Novel And Three Stories

The voice of David Shrayer-Petrov's immigrant fiction blends Russian, Jewish, and American traditions. Collecting an autobiographical novel and three short stories, Autumn in Yalta brings together the achievements of great Russian masters Chekhov and Nabokov and of the magisterial Jewish and American storytellers. Bashevis Singer and Malamud. Shrayer-Petrov's ficiton examines forces and contradictions of love through different ethnic, religious, and social lenses.
Set in Stalinist Russia, the novel Strange Danya Rayev revolves around the wartime experiences of a Jewish-Russian boy evacuated from the besieged Leningrad to a remote village in the Ural Mountains. The young protagonist returns to his native city in 1944 only to confront the devastation of family and the bitter and harsh realities of anti-Semitism.
In the title story "Autumn in Yalta," the idealistic protagonist, Dr. Samoylovich, is sent to a Siberian prison camp because of his ill-fated love for Polechka, a tuberculosis patient. Returning to reform-era Moscow from Siberia, he seeks to settle scores with his ruptured past. In "The Love of Akira Watanabe," once again unrequited love is the focus of the central character, a displaced Japanese professor at a New England university. A fishing expedition and an old Jewish cooking recipe make for a surprise ending in "Carp for the Gefilte Fish," a tale of a childless couple from Belarus and their American employers.
Love and memory, medicine and healing, dual identity and the experience of exile are the chief components. This book will appeal to a wide audience - the general reader and especially those interested in ethnic and immigrant literature.