The Last and the First, by Nina Berberova

The Last and the First

by Nina Berberova

Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz

Pushkin Press, 2021

Russia Beyond the Headlines’ 10 best Russian books published in English in 2021

World Literature Today’s 75—Make That 100—Notable Translations of 2021.

On a crisp September morning, trouble comes to the Gorbatovs’ farm. Having fled revolution and civil war in Russia, the family has worked tirelessly to establish themselves as crop farmers in Provence, their hopes of returning home a distant dream. While young Ilya Stepanovich is committed to this new way of life, his step-brother Vasya looks only to the past. With the arrival of a letter from Paris, a plot to lure Vasya back to Russia begins in earnest, and Ilya must set out for the capital to try to preserve his family’s fragile stability.

The first novel by the celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova, The Last and the First is an elegant and devastating portrayal of the internal struggles of a generation of émigrés. Appearing for the first time in English in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Marian Schwartz, it shows Berberova in full command of her gifts as a writer of masterful poise and psychological insight.

REVIEWS

By turns tragic and redemptive, Berberova’s is an elegiac tale of emigration, patriotism, destitution and desolation, illuminating in exquisite prose the struggles and stark divisions that emerge not just in exile but between generations, across countries and continents, ideologies and worldviews. — Bryan Karetnik, Financial Times, July 23, 2021

“[Berberova’s] psychological portraits, dialogue, and prose are intensely elegant, even luminous. She seemed to have an otherworldly sense of what to say outright and what to leave implicit in her work.” -- Kirkus Reviews

"[A] unique, harmonious, and brilliant book. Her language is uncommonly strong and pure; her images are magnificent for their solid and precise power... this is literature of the highest quality, the work of a genuine writer." -- Vladimir Nabokov

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