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9780299316006 Academic Inspection Copy

Daytime Stars

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For 872 days during World War II, the city of Leningrad endured a crushing blockade at the hands of German forces. Close to one million civilians died, most from starvation. Amid the devastation, Olga Berggolts broadcast her poems on the one remaining radio station, urging listeners not to lose hope. When the siege had begun, the country had already endured decades of revolution, civil war, economic collapse, and Stalin's purges. Berggolts herself survived the deaths of two husbands and both of her children, her own arrest, and a stillborn birth after being beaten under interrogation. Berggolts wrote her memoir Daytime Stars in the spirit of the thaw after Stalin's death. In it, she celebrated the ideals of the revolution and the heroism of the Soviet people while also criticizing censorship of writers and recording her doubts and despair. This English translation by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum makes available a unique autobiographical work by an important author of the Soviet era. In her foreword, Katharine Hodgson comments on experiences of the Terror about which Berggolts was unable or unwilling to write.
Lisa Kirschenbaum is professor in the Department of History at West Chester University. Barbara Walker is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. Katharine Hodgson is senior lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter.
"A compelling work and an interesting window onto a Soviet life, extending from a childhood during the civil war to the youthful revolutionary in Petrograd/Leningrad, from the terror of the 1930s and the siege of Leningrad to the present of the text, 1953-62."--Emily Van Buskirk, author of Lydia Ginzburg's Prose "A lyrical memoir steeped in the world of the Russian/Soviet intelligentsia. Berggolts opens up to her readers the gray zones of Soviet life."--Benjamin Nathans, author of Beyond the Pale "This masterful work combines features of diary and memoir, poetry and prose, sermon and confession. . . . [A] beautiful translation. . . . This thoughtfully crafted volume provides a perfect introduction."-- "The Russian Review" "The appearance of Olga Berggolts's work of prose Daytime Stars should be saluted as an important step in development of the English-language version of the Soviet century's Modernism. . . . Berggolts was perhaps one of the most striking women writing in Russian in her time. . . . I appreciate the choice of linguistic register by the translator. This translation allows the English language to sense Berggolts's original language with its combination of clarity, sentimentality and slightly exalted rhythms."-- "Slavic Review"
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