Maxim D. Shrayer, bilingual author and scholar, was born in
Moscow in 1967 to a Jewish-Russian family with Ukrainian and Lithuanian roots
and spent over eight years as a refusenik. He and his parents, the writer David
Shrayer-Petrov and the translator Emilia Shrayer, left the USSR and immigrated
to the United States in 1987. Shrayer received a PhD from Yale University in
1995. He is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College.
Shrayer has authored and edited over twenty books of nonfiction, criticism, fiction,
poetry, and translations. Among his books are the literary memoirs Waiting for America and Leaving Russia and the collection A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas. He is the recipient of a number of awards and
fellowships, including a 2007 National Jewish Book Award and a 2012 Guggenheim
Fellowship. Shrayer's publications have been translated into ten languages. He
lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Dr. Karen E. Lasser, a medical researcher
and physician, and their daughters Mira and Tatiana.

Preface: Translingual Adventures

Ribs of Eden
In the Net of Composer N.
Romance with a Mortician
Only One Day in Venice
Yelets Women's High School
A Return to Kafka

Index of Names and Places
About the Author