Dim and Distant Days (New Russian Writing)

Larissa Miller's memoir recounts her childhood in postwar Moscow, with reminiscences about her mother, a major journalist under Stalin, and of her father killed in World War II; the discovery of her Jewish identity; her first love; and reflections on the nature of literature and art. Her life has been closely connected with all the major events of the age which she relates with sober tenderness and insight.

Born in 1940 Larissa Miller was educated at the Foreign Languages Institute in Moscow and later taught at Moscow University. A major lyrical poet, she is the author of ten books, including Nameless Day; My Land and Home; Let's Talk about the Paradoxes of Love; Holidays, Holidays; Between the Cloud and the Pit.
Winner of several literary prizes she was short-listed for the State Prize in 2000.
In Dim and Distant Days, Miller looks back over nearly five decades of Soviet history to her hungry but happy childhood in post-war Moscow; her coming of age as a Jewish girl in an anti-Semitic regime; her early loves and her student days; her encounters with the KGB as an English interpreter in the 1960s and again in the 1980s as the wife of human rights activist Boris Altschuler.
Miller's striking personality shines through her narrative. She radiates kindness and wisdom, seemingly fragile and vulnerable she is able to resist all ideological influences, remaining completely independent-minded and vibrantly alive.