Full Description
Set in the summer of 1979 at the height of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, Farewell, Mama Odessa is an autobiographical novel whose intertwined storylines follow a variety of people-dissidents, victims of ethnic discrimination, and black-marketers among them-as they bid farewell to their beloved home of Odessa, Ukraine, and make their way to the West.
At the book's center is Boris, a young writer thwarted by state censorship and antisemitism during the twilight years of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's sclerotic rule. With an Angora kitten for his companion and together with other émigrés, vulnerable, displaced, continually living out of a suitcase, he puts Russia in his rear-view mirror and sets out on a journey that will take him to Bratislava, Vienna, Rome, and New York on his way to Los Angeles.
Will Boris be able to rekindle his creative passion and inspiration in the West? Will other Jewish émigrés fit into the new society, so much different than the one they'd left behind? With humor and compassion, Farewell, Mama Odessa describes the émigrés' attempts at adjustment to the free world.
Contents
From the Author
1. The Sacred Soviet Border. .
2. One Sultry Evening. . . . .
3. Vicious Circle 20
4. A Late-Night Visit. . .
5. The Last Straw. . .
6. All is Lost!.. . .
7. A Letter from America
8. Who's Going to Save Me?...
9. Water Flowing and Not Flowing.
10. Strolling along the Broad
11. There are All Kinds of Jews
12. How to Marry Quickly
13. Hallucination.
14. We're Going, Going, Going to Some Very Distant Lands
15. Travel Companion Kisa
16. The Baklava Man
17. There's Many a Slip Between the Cup and the Lip
18. Play the Lunar Rhapsody for Me
19. The Viennese Divertissement
20. More Reliable than Coca-Cola Stocks
21. Survivor's Guilt
22. You Go Right, and I Go Left
23. All Roads Lead to Rome
24. Beating the System
25. Emigré "Decameron"
26. The Bratislava Troubles
27. Still at the Post-Office
28. Maybe We'll Patch it Up?...
29. How to Get Exiled without Really Trying
30. Rome is a Dangerous City
31. You Can't Take the Country out of the Country Boy...
32. The Dangerous Colonel
33. Dear Lidia, Dear Ostia
34. It Doesn't Count Here!...
35. Poor Willie
36. Arrivederci, Roma.
