David Lyalin's Blog

Question: And finally: what would you say to those who are just thinking about recording their family stories—or perhaps even considering turning them into a book someday?

Writing is a soul-enriching act. And writing about your own family—for your children, your grandchildren, for future generations—is doubly, if not triply, so. Very often, when it comes to family history, one thing becomes crystal clear: if you don’t do it, no one will. No one but you will gather it, preserve it, write it down. And in that moment—realizing that you’ve saved your loved ones from oblivion—that’s worth more than anything.

So, my advice is: just begin, just dare. That’s how memory stays alive.

Question: Which story was the most difficult for you to write—whether emotionally, or in terms of conveying the meaning clearly (for example, in translation or when explaining historical context)?

Emotionally, the hardest one to write was about my grandmother—the short novella “The Grandmothers”. I’ve already spoken about that.

Technically, “The Execution” was especially challenging. It features multiple voices from very different characters and getting them all down on paper was not easy. Translating them was even harder.

The one that took me the longest to write was “My Yiddish”. It was my very first story: I began writing it in English, and after reading the draft three or four months later, I started all over again—but this time, in Russian.

Question: How has your idea of “home” changed as a result of working on this book?

The idea of “home” is a delicate—and sometimes painful—question for many immigrants. For many years, Leningrad was my home. Then, gradually, and only with time, came the feeling of a new home—here in Atlanta.

Working on this book brought me back to Leningrad, a city I haven’t seen in thirty-five years. Along with the warm memories, that virtual return brought with it a final clarity: that home is gone. Gone—like a home blown away by the wind, to borrow a phrase that was born right here in Atlanta, thanks to Margaret Mitchell.

But I remember it. I remember.

Question: Is there a particular episode that’s especially dear to you—both as a writer and as a person?

All the episodes are about people close to me—my loved ones—so each episode is dear to me in its own way.

But if I had to single out the moments that touched me most deeply, it would be my grandfather’s execution (in the story “The Execution”) and my grandmother’s death (in the story “The Grandmothers”).

Very personal, very painful. A fracture you continue to feel—even after the story is written.

Question: If the characters in your stories could read this book, what do you think they would say? How would they react to the way they’re portrayed and to the stories themselves?

I’m happy that mom read my stories—and approved of them.
As for my grandmothers, grandfathers, and my father… well, as the saying goes, time will tell.

Forgive the self-quotation, but here’s a short excerpt from the story “My Yiddish”:

“I know they all wait for the day when I join them in that very garden, in the verdant boughs of Heaven. I see how they will embrace and kiss me, and their eyes will radiate love. We will sit at the table, which will have food prepared by my grandmother, and we will endlessly interrupt each other with amazing stories, in which the Russian language is seasoned with colorful inserts in Yiddish. Stories about life, love, children, about things that always matter, and about trivialities that are important only to us.

And there will be an unimaginably long time, and this time we’ll manage to talk about everything under the sun, in both this world and the next. One thing troubles me—I don’t know if I’ll be able to explain to them why none of my grandchildren or my sister’s grandchildren are named after our father. But ultimately, out of pity for me, they’ll pretend to understand, and I will feel my grandfather’s hand stroking my head, and again hear his words in a mix of Yiddish and Russian: ‘Leib mainer (my beloved), my sun…’”

Question: How important do you think it is to preserve family stories? After all, our memories tend to reflect our own emotional experiences—our personal perception of events—which doesn’t always align with how, say, the science of history interprets them. And when it comes to passing on someone else’s memories, how historically accurate can those even be?

Ah, now you’ve touched on a rather painful subject for me.
“Historical science… interprets…”

My father used to say: “Prisons are full of historians—under every regime!” (see the story “Dad: The Contours of a Biography”).

He didn’t become a historian. Neither did I.
True historians—historians with a capital H—can be counted on one hand. And inevitably, they all tend to focus on Ancient History. Or, at the very closest, the Middle Ages. Even there, they move as if through a minefield.

Because “historical science” all too often follows the orders of those in power. Especially in Soviet times—but, sadly, not only then and not only there.

But personal memory—even if it’s subjective, fragmentary, and imperfect—is always more honest. So yes, for me, personal recollections carry more weight than the conclusions of so-called historical science. Because they don’t come from anyone’s directives—they come from lived experience, from the heart.

Forgive my bluntness—but it’s a subject I cannot speak lightly about.

Question: I realize that predicting reader reactions is a thankless task—especially since the emotional triggers an author builds into a text don’t necessarily match the ones the audience will pick up on. This is all the more true in your case, since your stories deal so much with life in the USSR—a subject remembered in such vastly different ways today. Still, what kind of response do you hope for from readers? Nostalgia, curiosity about family history, a desire to preserve their own memories?

I’ve more or less already answered that—in the previous question.

All I can add is that I can’t dictate what a reader is supposed to feel. But if the book stirs any kind of emotion, personal memory—or simply the desire to preserve one—then it has done its job. Even if the reaction is nothing like what I originally put into it.

Kafka put it—perhaps a bit too bluntly: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

As for me, I’d prefer my book to feel more like a warm breeze from a happy childhood. And what that breeze might stir in the reader—only G-d knows.

Question: You wrote this book primarily for your grandchildren—but who else, in your view, might find it meaningful or personally important? In other words, who do you see as your book’s main audience?

Although I wrote this book primarily for my grandchildren, it may turn out to be meaningful and useful to a much broader audience.

First and foremost, it’s for the children and grandchildren of immigrants in bilingual families. For them, this book can serve both as an educational tool for learning English or Russian, and as a cultural bridge to the past of their own families—a past that is often already faded or forgotten.

I also think of those who themselves remember the Soviet past—with all its complexity, its joy and sorrow, its daily life and absurdities. For them, this book may offer a reason to smile, to shed a tear, to compare their memories with mine.

In my experience, the book may spark particular interest in the English-speaking world—especially within the American Jewish community. Their ancestors once came from the Russian Empire. For them, this isn’t just someone else’s story—it’s a glimpse into the past of nearly forgotten forebears, about whom they typically know very, very little.

In addition, the book may be of interest to people in academic settings—especially in departments of Slavic studies and in programs focused on Russian or Jewish culture. Its bilingual format makes it a valuable resource for both students and instructors.

And of course, there’s yet another group: parents and grandparents who want to pass something on to their children but don’t know where to start. Maybe my example will give them a little push—to just sit down and begin telling stories, even if they’ve never written a single line of prose before.

So, what began as a very personal project has turned into a way to carry memory forward. And whoever feels the need to preserve memory—may well find a need for this book.

And finally, I’d like to share a quote from the unforgettable Boris Strugatsky—words that have served (and still serve) as a kind of guiding star for me. Forgive the lofty tone, but here it is:

You have to be an optimist. No matter how poorly you’ve written your story, there will always be thousands of readers who will consider it nothing short of a masterpiece.

At the same time, you have to be a skeptic. No matter how well you’ve written your story, there will inevitably be thousands of readers who will sincerely believe it’s complete garbage.

And finally, you have to be a realist. No matter how well—or how poorly—you’ve written your story, there will always be millions of people who remain completely indifferent to it. They simply won’t care whether you wrote it or never even started.

Question: Did Russian and English ever “argue” with each other, forcing you to look for special solutions?

To be honest, Russian and English were “arguing” with each other constantly—practically on every page. Which, of course, is no surprise: these two languages belong to completely different cultural and historical universes.

The constant struggle to balance accurate translation, the style of the original, mismatched everyday realities, and untranslatable jokes and wordplay… all of it left me utterly exhausted. I made myself a promise: never again! And so far, I intend to keep it. Let’s leave Nabokov’s torment to Nabokov.

Question: In your view, which language conveys the tone of memory more precisely—Russian or English?

I don’t mean to diminish the English version, but to me, the answer to your question is obvious.
Russian is the language of memory.
English is the delivery vehicle—meant to carry that memory to an audience from another planet.

All I can add is that I carved out that delivery vehicle with the stubbornness of Sisyphus, tormented by the search for solutions that didn’t exist in nature. All the while feeling like Orpheus, trying to carry poetry out of the underworld of the Russian language and into the English-speaking upper world.

Question: All the stories were written in Russian and translated into English by you. Do the two languages offer different perspectives on the same story—or are they, in your view, two different texts?

In my view, it’s the same story—told from a single perspective. I genuinely tried to preserve both the content and the tone as faithfully as possible. But each language is more than just a different set of words; it’s a different climate, a different gravity. Russian is the language in which the characters of these stories lived, thought, loved, and suffered. It is the language of memory. English is the language my grandchildren speak. It is the language of hope—the hope that the link between generations will not be broken. And it’s not just a difference between Russian and English—it’s also a difference between cultural contexts. Much in these stories points back to the Soviet era: to its realities, vocabulary, intonations, habits—and all of that requires special care in translation.

So technically—yes, it’s the same text. But adapted. I tried to preserve the meanings, the emotions, the rhythms—but the structure, the phrasing, the cultural references often needed to be rethought. Some things simply don’t translate—they have to be recreated. In some places, I had to rework the humor; in others, explain what is intuitively clear in Russian. Therefore, these are not two different perspectives—but perhaps, they are two different accents of the same voice.