Russian Winter. Daphne Kalotay

Russian Winter


Russian.Winter.pdf
ISBN: 0061962163,9780061962165 | 480 pages | 24 Mb

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Russian Winter Daphne Kalotay
Publisher: HarperCollins


Product Description
A mysterious jewel holds the key to a life-changing secret, in this breathtaking tale of love and art, betrayal and redemption.

A Q&A with Author Daphne Kalotay


Nina is in some ways based on my Hungarian grandmother. Now 93 years old, she too has a very strong personality, and I see in her the same fiery strength Nina exhibits. My grandmother is a more joyous and loving person than Nina, but once she decides she doesn’t like someone, that’s it; she is very headstrong, and I’ve glimpsed the way that she decides that certain people are her enemies. It’s a quality that has long intrigued me.


In order to get a better sense of this, I did a lot of reading, mostly memoirs and biographies by artists and intellectuals who had experienced that era, or by Westerners who had travelled behind the Iron Curtain during that time (though of course their experience was quite different.) I also made a visit to Russia, but that was after I’d finished writing.


In a way it’s amazing to think that in America most artists and writers like myself never have to give a thought to whether or not their work is going get them in trouble. Our censors are the hoops we have to jump through to get published or have a show produced or a painting shown. Our gatekeepers aren’t politicians; they’re editors or producers, and the tyranny isn’t politics but what’s in vogue, or what’s cheapest to produce, or what the marketing folks think will make money. And yet it’s a capitalist society that allows us the privilege to make any sort of art we want, whether or not anyone notices it or pays attention.

Kalotay makes a powerful debut with a novel about a Soviet-era prima ballerina, now retired and living in Boston, who confronts her past as she puts up for auction the jewelry she took with her when she left her husband and defected. Nina "The Butterfly" Revskaya, 79, reveals little about the past to curious auction house representative Drew Brooks as he peruses her cache of exquisite jewelry. Nina likewise rebuffs inquiries from foreign language professor Grigori Solodin, who has translated the works of Nina's poet husband and who offers an additional item for auction: the amber necklace he inherited from the parents he never knew. In extended flashbacks, Nina recalls intimate moments and misunderstandings with her husband, happy and disturbing times with his Jewish composer best friend, and encounters with her own childhood friend. Meanwhile, Drew and Grigori delve into the jewelry's provenance, hoping to learn as much about the jewels as their own pasts. While the Soviet-era romance can lean too much on melodrama, Kalotay turns out a mostly entrancing story thanks to a skillful depiction of artistic life behind the Iron Curtain and intriguing glimpses into auction house operations.
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