Doctor Levitin: a novel

✍ Scribed by Bronstein, Arna B.;Shrayer, Maxim D.;Šraer-Petrov, David Petrovič

• Book ID: 100553200
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 249 KB
• Category: Fiction
• City: Soviet Union,Soviet Union.
• ISBN: 0814345743

✦ Synopsis

Available now for the first time in English, Doctor Levitin is a modern classic in Jewish literature. A major work of late twentieth-century Russian and Jewish literature since its first publication in Israel in 1986, it has also seen three subsequent Russian editions. It is the first in David Shrayer-Petrovs trilogy of novels about the struggle of Soviet Jews and the destinies of refuseniks. In addition to being the first novel available in English that depicts the experience of the Jewish exodus from the former USSR, Doctor Levitin is presented in an excellent translation that has been overseen and edited by the authors son, the bilingual scholar Maxim D. Shrayer.

Doctor Levitin is a panoramic novel that portrays the Soviet Union during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the USSR invaded Afghanistan and Soviet Jews fought for their right to emigrate. Doctor Herbert Levitin, the novels protagonist, is a professor of medicine in Moscow whose non-Jewish wife, Tatyana, comes from the Russian peasantry. Shrayer-Petrov documents with anatomical precision the mutually unbreachable contradictions of the Levitins mixed marriage, which becomes an allegory of Jewish-Russian history. Doctor Levitins Jewishness evolves over the course of the novel, becoming a spiritual mission. The antisemitism of the Soviet regime forces the quiet intellectual and his family to seek emigration. Denied permission to leave, the family of Doctor Levitin is forced into the existence of refuseniks and outcasts, which inexorably leads to their destruction and a final act of defiance and revenge on the Soviet system.

A significant contribution to the works of translated literature available in English, David Shrayer-Petrovs Doctor Levitin is ideal for any reader of fiction and literature. It will hold particular interest for those who study Jewish or Russian literature, culture, and history and Cold War politics.

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Review

Osip Mandelstam spoke of the 'end of the novel as a result of the end of biography.' In the twentieth century, one's biography isn t always merely a product of fate or chance. David Shrayer-Petrov's novel is about such a biography.... If Doctor Levitin, the kindest person of the most even temper and calm demeanor, turns into a possessed avenger, this cannot be explained in psychological terms, except by the absurdity of the position in which he finds himself and of the destiny he shares with thousands of other [refuseniks]. --Victor Terras, professor emeritus at Brown University and author of The Young Dostoevsky and A History of Russian Literature

David Shrayer-Petrov survived living hell and transferred his experiences to fiction. His protagonist, a Jew, a Refusenik of Soviet days, must wait and wait, reason with the unreasonable, and search the shadows for portent answers. In this major Jewish-Russian novel, Shrayer-Petrov raises the pitch of storytelling to devastating levels. Doctor Levitin, his family, and the Soviet Union will never be the same. --Brian Horowitz, Sizeler Family Endowed Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University

A heartrending novel about a Soviet Jewish family with a dream of leaving for Israel. Often tragic, always vivid, Doctor Levitin is a startling fantasy of revenge and redemption. --Joshua Rubenstein, author of The Last Days of Stalin

About the Author

David Shrayer-Petrov, a well-known contemporary Russian-American writer and medical scientist, was born in Leningrad in 1936 and immigrated to the United States in 1987. He has published twenty-five books in his native Russian and three books of fiction in English translation, including Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories.

Maxim D. Shrayer, the authors son and translator, is professor of Russian, English, and Jewish studies at Boston College and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow. His books include Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration and Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story.

The American-born Arna B. Bronstein and the Polish-born Aleksandra I. Fleszar are professors of Russian and Slavic studies at the University of New Hampshire. Longtime collaborators, they have co-authored acclaimed textbooks of Russian, including Making Progress in Russian, and have translated fiction and nonfiction from the Russian. They have previously translated David Shrayer-Petrovs short novel Strange Danya Rayev and his short stories.

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✦ Subjects

Soviet Union