30/01/2025
Originally written in Russian in 2011, the short story “Mansion over the Town Fields” is an incisive investigation into the hypocrisies and antisemitism underlying the heart of that era’s Occupy Wall Street Movement, by the late, great Jewish-Russian refusenik author David Shrayer Petrov z”l (1936-2024).
TO READ THE FULL STORY, VISIT: https://greengolemmag.com/2025/01/30/mansion-over-the-town-fields/
The story demonstrates Shrayer-Petrov’s remarkable talent for nuance: it is equal parts heartfelt and cynical, and not a single word could be adequately described with any label but “genuine”. With the student encampments of today, the failed, decade-stale movement David investigates here has never been more relevant. Most of all, it does what any good piece of prose fiction must do: its characters come alive on the page.
David Shrayer-Petrov (z”l), writer, medical scientist, and former refusenik activist, was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1936, immigrated to the United States in 1987, and died in Boston on June 9th, 2024. He published twenty-six books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction in his native Russian. Shrayer-Petrov’s books of fiction in English include collections of stories such as Jonah and Sarah, Autumn in Yalta, Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories, and the novel Doctor Levitin.
Maxim D. Shrayer (translator), the author’s son, is a professor at Boston College and a bilingual author and translator. Shrayer is the author, most recently, of Kinship, a poetry collection.
Charis Nwaozuzu (illustrator) is a tattoo artist out of Oklahoma. She is a Jewish member of the Cherokee Nation. She believes that storytelling through art is deeply rooted in both of her cultures, and is excited to be passing that tradition down to the next generation as well.
