Aetherial Worlds

by Tatyana Tolstaya

Overview

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature
Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize

In this dazzling collection of stories from one of Russia’s most important writers, ordinary realities—and our yearnings to transcend them—lead to miraculous otherworlds. A woman’s deceased father appears in her dreams with clues about the afterlife. A man falls in love with a marble statue as his marriage falls apart. A child glimpses heaven through a stained-glass window.
 
Tolstaya’s tales—rendered with the emotional insight of Chekhov, the surreal satire of Gogol, and a unique blend of humor and poetry all her own—transmute the quotidian into aetherial wonders. As these stories explore politics, identity, love, and loss, they cut to the quick of the Russian psyche even as they lay bare human universals. Whether contemplating the intricacies of telegram delivery in Leningrad or the meditative melancholy of holiday aspic, Tolstaya limns the stark elements of existence and our vibrant inner lives in an extraordinary vision of life on earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525434184
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/19/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Tatyana Tolstaya lives in Moscow. For twelve years, she was the cohost of The School for Scandal, a popular talk show on Russian television covering culture and politics. She is also the cofounder of a creative writing academy in Moscow. She has written for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Five of her books, including her novel The Slynx, have been translated into English. 

Translated by Anya Migdal.

Table of Contents

20/20 3

Aspic 7

Smoke and Shadows 11

Passing Through 33

A Young Lady in Bloom 37

Nowhere 50

Father 54

The Invisible Maiden 59

The Square 101

Judith with the Sword 112

Aetherical Worlds 116

Doors and Demons 161

Without 170

Faraway Lands 174

Official Nationality 190

Swedenborg 199

The Window 213

See the Reverse 230

Editorial Reviews

Marvelously vivid. . . . Tolstaya’s vision reveals the world as a complex system of real and unreal realms . . . floodlit by flashes of transcendence.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Beautiful. . . . The best of Tolstaya’s stories trace [the] intersection of imagination and memory, where the two become something greater by not being merely one or the other.” —The New Yorker  

“Resplendent. . . . Playful and poetic . . . Memory fuses with wonder, and wonder with worship.” —The Wall Street Journal
 
“Grimly hilarious. . . . Divinely quotable. . . . Everything in this generous writer’s hands is vivid and alive.” —Joy Williams, Bookforum

“Masterful. . . . A collection of dark, funny folkloric tales.” —The Paris Review

“Call off the search for Tatyana Tolstaya’s origins among the Russian greats: There's no one like her anywhere, then or now. She is a writer of breathtaking originality, boldness and importance.” —Thomas McGuane, author of Cloudbursts

“Tolstaya’s writing is so good that it cuts through the surface directly to the universal workings of the human heart.” —BookPage

“Praised by Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky as ‘the most original, tactile, luminous voice in Russian prose,’ Tolstaya, two decades on, is all that and more in this edgy, brash, slyly surreal, and mordantly funny short story collection. . . . Tolstaya’s daring, masterful stories, crisply translated, glint and whirl with extraordinary dimension and force.” —Booklist

“These uniformly masterful stories reject any attempt at easy categorization, resulting in a profound, surprising, and rich experience. . . . While the works blend fantasy and fact, often within the same story, what unites them all is Tolstaya’s singular and assured voice, capable of beautiful specificity.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Elegant, lyrical tales woven with melancholy and world-weariness—but also with a curious optimism. A gem.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

From the Publisher

Although this is Tolstaya's first book to be translated into English in 10 years, it could not be said of Aetherial Worlds that it is all killer, no filler…Tolstaya's vision…reveals the world as not just a dull accretion of matter but a complex and shifting system of real and unreal realms, populated by beings both visible and invisible, floodlit by flashes of transcendence.

The New York Times Book Review - Lev Grossman