Immigrant Baggage

Named one of 12 of the Best Jewish Books of the Year by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, New York Jewish Week, & Jerusalem Post

2023 International Book Awards Finalist in the Humor/Comedy/Satire Category

From a bilingual master of the literary memoir comes this movingand humorous story of losing immigrant baggage and trying to reclaim it for hisAmerican future.

 In this poignantliterary memoir, internationally acclaimed author and Boston College professorMaxim D. Shrayer (Waiting for America) explores both material andimmaterial aspects of immigrant baggage. Through a combination of dispassionatereportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversingthe borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourishedhim—Russian, Jewish, and American. The spirit of nonconformism and the power oflaughter come to the rescue of Shrayer’s autobiographical protagonist when hefaces existential calamities and life’s misadventures.

 The aftermathof a dangerous ski accident in Italy reminds the memoirist of history’s blackholes. A haunting, Soviet-era theatrical affair pushes the émigré protagonistto the brink of a disaster in a provincial Russian town. Attempting to collect overdueroyalties from a Moscow publisher, the expatriate writer tips his hat to Kafka.The book’s six interconnected tales are held together by the memorist’simperative to make the ordinary absurd and the absurd—ordinary. Shrayer parsesa translingual literary life filled with travel, politics, and discovery—andsustained by family love and faith in art’s transcendence.