Maybe Esther

This inventive, unique debut work of fiction-from a prize-winning Russian Jewish author-follows the fascinating and unusual story of a Russian Jewish family across 20th century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.

When Katja Petrowskaja first conceived of this project, she wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents. But her work blossomed into this striking and highly original autobiographical...
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This inventive, unique debut work of fiction-from a prize-winning Russian Jewish author-follows the fascinating and unusual story of a Russian Jewish family across 20th century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.

When Katja Petrowskaja first conceived of this project, she wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents. But her work blossomed into this striking and highly original autobiographical novel: a fictional account of her search for meaning amidst the stories of her ancestors. In a series of short meditations, Petrowskaja delves into family legends, introducing a remarkable cast of characters: Judas Stern, her great-uncle, who fired on a German diplomatic attache in 1932 and was sentenced to death. Her grandfather Semyon, who went underground during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and took on an alias, forever splitting their branch of the family from the rest. Her grandmother Rosa, who ran an orphanage in the Urals for deaf-mute Jewish children. Her Ukrainian grandfather Vasily, who disappeared during World War II and reappeared forty-one years later, with no explanation, settling into his family's lives as if he'd never been gone. And her great-grandmother, whose name is lost to time but may have been Esther, who stayed behind in Kiev after her family had fled and was killed by the Nazis.

How do you talk about what you can't know, how do you bring the past to life? Petrowskaja visits the scenes of these events, reflecting on a fragmented and traumatized century and bringing to light figures who threaten to drift into obscurity. A poignant, haunting investigation of the effects of history on one family.