Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The Memory Artist by Katherine Brabon

by
August 2016, no. 383

The Memory Artist by Katherine Brabon

Allen & Unwin $29.99 pb, 300 pp, 9781760292867

The Memory Artist by Katherine Brabon

by
August 2016, no. 383

For Pasha Ivanov, memory is 'a warped wound, with a welt or bruise that had arrived inexplicably late'. As the son of political dissidents in Moscow during Brezhnev's rule, his childhood memories wend between impressions of his mother leaning over the typewriter, her back's incline 'like a mountain, severe and strong', and the activists who gather in their small flat copying banned poems and articles. Among them is the trace of Pasha's absent father and the silence surrounding that absence. As Pasha reaches adulthood, just as Gorbachev with his glasnost or openness arrives, the inheritance of lost history begins to reveal its injuries.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.