The Origins of Nostalgia

Poetic and analytical by turns, Svetlana Boym’s charismatic energy lives in every page of these brilliant autobiographical writings. They chart her post Sputnik Leningrad childhood in one of the Soviet ideologically imposed communal apartments, with its multiple partitions, at once prohibiting privacy and striving for it, to her departure from Russia aged twenty. Ambivalent about Soviet communality and the American dream, the work is a profound meditation on the psychic shock of an ever unfinished emigrant life. She is doubly alien, estranged from Soviet Russia and a ‘foreign-insider’, resident and non-resident, in Boston. Nostalgia, here lyrically explored, is a leitmotif of her work. Broken bones, a shattered porcelain cup, become emblems in an émigré’s narrative of belonging, unbelonging, and longing. * Isobel Armstrong, Emeritus Professor of English, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and author of Victorian Glassworks *
Eloquent, ironic, and haunting, this suite of Svetlana Boym’s essays is a shifting kaleidoscope of vivid memories, from a Soviet childhood to her ongoing reinventions of herself in America. The Origins of Nostalgia is the culmination of Svetlana Boym’s creative intertwining of her life and her compelling life’s work. * David Damrosch, Harvard University, USA *