Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Lara Vapnyar came to the US from Russia in 1994. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, and Goldberg Prize for Jewish fiction. She is the author of There Are Jews in My House, Memoirs of a Muse, Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love, The Scent of Pine, and Still Here. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's, and Vogue.
This bio was last updated on 09/27/2019. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
The protagonist of Memoirs of a Muse is a young
Russian immigrant named Tanya. Raised by her single mother, a professor,
Tanya escapes the drudgery of post-Cold War Moscow life by reading about
Apollinaria Suslova, Dostoevsky's mistress and muse. Tanya romanticizes
that she too one day will become a muse like Suslova. After graduating from
college, she immigrates to New York, but unlike her relatives before her, who
try in more conventional ways to assimilate to American culture, she holds on to
her ambition to be "special," to become the muse to a great American writer.
American readers might be
unfamiliar with an ambition like Tanya's, especially since the novel is set in
present-day New York City where most women define success quite differently, and
may initially misunderstand Tanya's idea of a muse as being intentionally
subservient to the man or artist. How does Tanya define the role of muse? Would
Tanya have wanted the same thing for herself in Russia? Does Tanya represent
something larger about young immigrant women?
First of all, Tanya has a very idealistic view of a role of
muse. She doesn't think that a muse is subservient to an artist, but...
Alina Adams was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and immigrated with her parents to the U.S. in 1977 at age seven, where she learned English by watching American soap operas at their home in San Francisco.
Alina is a fiction ...
(more)
If you enjoyed:
Divide Me By Zero
Try:
The Nesting Dolls
by Alina Adams
Rachel is a prolific writer and reviewer and her work has appeared in the LA Review of Books, the Tel Aviv Review of Books and DeadDarlings. She is an Honorary Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Divide Me By Zero
Try:
Atomic Anna
by Rachel Barenbaum
We recommend 21 similar authors
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Stone Home
by Crystal Hana Kim
A moving family drama and coming-of-age story revealing a dark corner of South Korean history.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
