Many of us know Maxim Shrayer as the author of "The
World of Nabokov's Short Stories"--an excellent study of VN as a short story
writer. Fewer are aware that Maxim's father, David Shrayer-Petrov, is a gifted
and much published writer of Russian stories and novellas who brought his family
to the US in 1987. He continues the Chekhov tradition of the Russian
physician-writer. The title story of his latest book "Autumn in
Yalta" (Syracuse U.P) echoes VN's "Spring in Fialta" and plays upon
upon the original in interesting ways. Maxim Shrayer appends an informative
essay on family and literary history.
D. Barton Johnson