| Out of Russia: Fictions of a New Translingual Diaspora Subjects: Fiction -- Russian authors -- History and criticism; Fiction -- 21st century -- History and criticism; National characteristics Russian in literature; Out of Russia is the first scholarly work to focus on a group of writers who, over the past decade, have formed a distinct phenomenon: immigrants with cultural and linguistic roots in Russia who have chosen to write in the language of their adopted countries. The best known among these are Andreï Makine, who writes in French, Wladimir Kaminer, who writes in German, and Gary Shteyngart, who writes in English. Wanner also addresses the work of emerging immigrant writers active in North America, Germany, and Israel. He argues that it is in part by writing in a language other than their native Russian that these writers have made something of a commodity of their "Russianness." That many of them also happen to be Jewish adds still another layer to the questions of identity raised by their work. In situating these writers within broader contexts, Wanner explores such topics as migration, cultural hybrids, and the construction and perception of ethnicity. Adrian Wanner is Liberal Arts Research Professor of Slavic Languages and and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Russian Minimalism: From the Prose Poem to the Anti-Story (Northwestern, 2003) and has published six volumes of Russian, Ukrainian, and Romanian poetry in German verse translation. |