In Memory of Memory

With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, & heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions & repressions of the last century. 

In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag & Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity & a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms - essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue & historical documents - Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas & personalities & offers an entirely new & bold exploration of cultural & personal memory. 

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Maria Stepanova, born in Moscow in 1972, is a poet, essayist, & journalist, & editor in chief of the online newspaper Colta. In 2018, she was awarded the Bolshaya Kniga Award for In Memory of Memory.