Stories of a Life

Nataliya Meshchaninova

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A Russian cult hit by rising filmmaker and author Nataliya Meshchaninova, Stories of a Life is a fierce and tender memoir-novel of one young woman's experiences growing up around, and despite, men in the post-Soviet malaise of the late '90s.

Book Details

Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Publish Date: Feb 1st, 2022
Pages: 184
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 6.90in - 4.20in - 0.50in - 0.35lb
EAN: 9781646051151
Categories: • Literary• Women

About the Author

Nataliya Meshchaninova is a cinematographer in Russia who made her directorial debut in 2014. In 2017, she broke onto the literary scene with the viral hit Stories of A Life, which became a pillar of the #metoo movement in Russia.

Fiona Bell is a literary translator and scholar of Russian literature who is committed to sharing the voices of contemporary female and nonbinary Russian writers with anglophone audiences. After earning her B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, Bell completed an M.S t. degree in Russian at Oxford University. In 2018-2019, she was mentored by Marian Schwartz through the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program. In 2019-2020, she received a Fulbright grant to teach university-level English in Ulyanovsk, Russia. Her translation of Stories of a Life by Nataliya Meshchaninova received a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. Bell's essays have appeared in Full Stop, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is from St. Petersburg, Florida, but currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut while earning a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University.

Praise for this book

"Tearing herself free with screams, taunts, and something very much like poetry, Meshchaninova has given us an obscenely private text as frightening as the novels of Stephen King and as sharply formed as the tragedies of Racine... it's not every year that a voice so pure and powerful emerges in Russian literature." --Galina Yuzefovich, Meduza

"Meshchaninova's scenarios are skin torn to blood, pink glasses discarded as unnecessary, truth uncomfortable for the inhabitants of parallel reality." --Elena Tanakova, Gallerix

"It is not often that people are ready to open up, and only the willingness to open up distinguishes real literature." --Aglaya Kurnosenko

"The author, in general, is not trying to shock, she is simply not afraid to say. But this simultaneous openness and ruthlessness strikes with unexpected force and long action. Leads the reader out of their comfort zone. Makes him an involuntary and seemingly guilty observer." --Elena Makeenko, Gorky Media

"This story is not about disaster, but about what happens to the survivors... This is the new Russian prose."-- Vladimir Pankratov

Winner of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant

2018 NatsBest nominee

Longlisted for the NOS(E) Award