Book review - 'Love’s labours should be lost': Maria Stepanova, Russia's next great writer
Vladimir Nabokov - one of Stepanova’s many literary companions in In Memory of Memory - once wrote: “I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is . ” Years ago, Maria Stepanova visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to do research for a book she would end up working on for 30 years. After telling him of her plan, the museum adviser replied: “Ah. One of those books where the author travels around the world in search of his or her roots – there are plenty of those now.” “Yes,” replied Stepanova. “And now there will be one more.” In Memory of Memory is an astounding collision of personal and cultural history, and Stepanova’s first full-length book published in English, translated by Sasha Dugdale. It is a remarkable work from a writer who has won Russia’s most prestigious honours (including the Big Book award for In Memory of Memory , the NOS literary prize, the Andrei Bely prize and a Joseph Brodsky