Nina Berberova — Books — Marian Schwartz

The Last and the First, by Nina Berberova

In the chaos of early-1990s Russia, a paralyzed veteran’s wife and stepdaughter conceal the Soviet Union’s collapse from him in order to keep him—and his pension—alive, until it turns out the tough old man has other plans. An instant classic of post-Soviet Russian literature, Olga Slavnikova’s The Man Who Couldn’t Die tells the story of how two women try to prolong a life—and the means and meaning of their own lives—by creating a world that doesn’t change, a Soviet Union that never crumbled.

Moura, by Nina Berberova

Baroness Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya Benckendorff Budberg hailed from the Russian aristocracy and lived in the lap of luxury—until the Bolshevik Revolution forced her to live by her wits. Thereafter her existence was a story of connivance and stratagem, a succession of unlikely twists and turns. Intimately involved in the mysterious Lockhart affair, a conspiracy which almost brought down the fledgling Soviet state, mistress to Maxim Gorky and then to H.G. Wells, Moura was a woman of enormous energy, intelligence, and charm whose deepest passion was undoubtedly the mythologization of her own life.

The Book of Happiness, by Nina Berberova

"Schwartz, Berberova's longtime friend and translator, has written an affecting introduction to this volume, which she has translated with care and a suitable transparency. "The Ladies from St. Petersburg" is a very slight book, but it should add to readers' respect for Berberova and, as Schwartz puts it, for "the force of her art, her intellect and her will." -- Ken Kalfus, New York Times

Billancourt Tales, by Nina Berberova

Thirteen newly discovered stories by the great Russian writer, translated into English for the first time. Now added to the quartet of books by Nina Berberova that New Directions has presented for the delight of American readers is this delectable baker's dozen—Billancourt Tales. These are thirteen stories (Berberova called them "Fiestas") chosen from those she wrote in Paris between 1928 and 1940 for the émigré newspaper The Latest News.

FictionMarian SchwartzOctober 18, 2001Nina Berberova, Publication preview, Publication feature

Cape of Storms, by Nina Berberova

Berberova's wonderful novel about three love affairs. . . . Like Turgenev and Chekhov, of whom she is the rightful heir, is uncannily shrewd about romance, about its bright promise, without making her characters' real satisfaction seem trite.

The Ladies from St. Petersburg, by Nina Berberova

"Schwartz, Berberova's longtime friend and translator, has written an affecting introduction to this volume, which she has translated with care and a suitable transparency. "The Ladies from St. Petersburg" is a very slight book, but it should add to readers' respect for Berberova and, as Schwartz puts it, for "the force of her art, her intellect and her will." -- Ken Kalfus, New York Times

The Tattered Cloak and Other Novels, by Nina Berberova

First published in Europe in the 1930s and 40s, these searing, evocative stories by the late Russian expatriate writer Nina Berberova (1901-1993) are portraits of the lives of Russian exiles in Paris on the eve of World War II. The protagonists range from housekeepers and waiters to shabby-genteel aristocrats and intellectuals––but all are united in a haunting displacement from their pasts, and all share a troubling uncertainty about the future.

The Revolt, by Nina Berberova

FictionMarian SchwartzSeptember 18, 1989Nina Berberova, Marian Schwartz, Emigre, Collins, Publication preview, Publication feature

The Accompanist, by Nina Berberova

A spellbinding, short novel set in post-revolutionary Russia, The Accompanist portrays with extraordinary sensitivity the entangled relationships of three characters. Sonechka is a talented but shy young pianist hired by a beautiful soprano, Maria Nikolaevna, and her devoted, bourgeois husband. Maria is everything Sonechka is not, glamorous, flamboyant. Her voice brings with it "something immortal and indisputable, something which gives reality to the human being's dream of having wings." Doomed to live in her mentor's shadow, the young girl secretly schemes to expose the singer's infidelities.