Description: A stirring account of the early-twentieth century, Jewish émigré life, and English and Russian letters, A Russian Jew of Bloomsbury casts new light - and shadows - on the giants of English modernism.
Brief description: Galya Diment is chair and professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Review Quotes: "Galya Diment has done it again. The author of the acclaimed Pniniad, about Nabokov's major model for his legendary Russian lecturer, now turns to another Russian Jew with a still wider resonance in English literature. Part biography, part cultural history of the early twentieth-century impact of Russian literature on English literature (focusing on Koteliansky as a conduit and catalyst), and part exploration of being Jewish and foreign in England and in Bloomsbury, the book teems with vivid vignettes of the emotionally complicated Koteliansky, his close friend D.H. Lawrence (and his foe Frieda Lawrence), Katherine Mansfield, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, H.G. Wells, and many more. A fascinating read for lovers of literature, culture, history, and personality." Brian Boyd, author of Vladimir Nabokov and On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction