This issue of the magazine features:

• Review: An Essay Comparing Two Books

This unusual review was prompted by the fact that two émigré artists have recently published books in St. Petersburg. First, the Paris-based painter Boris Zaborov penned his memoirs, That Which Cannot Be Forgotten (2018). Then the Israeli sculptor and graphic artist Miriam Gamburd published a collection of her short stories, Gargoyle (2020), which is also partly a memoir. Zaborov was born in 1935 in Minsk and emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1980. Gamburd was born in 1947 in Chișinău and left for Israel in 1977. Both come from artist families, and both were educated in Leningrad. Both were successful in the Soviet Union, and both found recognition outside of it. Both are Jewish, which is reflected in their art and their writings. This is especially true for Gamburd, who produced, for example, an album of graphic art dealing with eroticism in the Talmud, accompanying it with texts on the same topic. Some of these texts have also been included in her Petersburg-published book. Zaborov also writes about his Jewish roots, but more Jewish content can be found in his paintings than in his autobiography. The essay’s author concludes his comparative analysis by stating that Russian-Jewish literature has been enriched by these two excellent books.

• Synopsis: Debut Novel by a San Francisco Doctor

Recently the novel Deti Voinova (Children of Voinov Street) by Zhanna Vishnevskaya, a San Francisco-based physician, won the prestigious Manuscript of the Year Award, and so her book was published by the largest publishing house in Russia. According to the reviewer, this is a “comeback novel” inviting the reader to the city of the author’s childhood—Leningrad during Khrushchev’s Thaw.

• Looking Through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: November–December 2020

• Bibliography: Sixty New Books