Yevsey Tseytlin's Rereading Silence, Tranlsated by Venya Gushchin

Yevsey Tseytlin is an essayist, literary critic, and prose writer. Author of numerous books, among them—Long Conversations in Anticipation of a Happy Death, the subject of debates and arguments for almost a quarter of a century in different countries (the book has been translated into English, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian).

The collection of diary short stories and essays by Yevsey Tseytlin Rereading Silence in its own way continues Long Conversations. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel called his Soviet compatriots “Jews of silence.” Tseytlin tries to “decipher” this silence by writing down Jewish confessions and dreams for many years. Together with his characters, the author plunges into their past lives, full of secrets that they try, but cannot forget.

This book was published in cooperation with Bagriy & Company, Chicago, IL.


Venya Gushchin is a PhD Candidate at Columbia University, writing a dissertation on the late styles of Russian Modernist poets. He is also a translator, who has worked primarily on Silver Age poetry (Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Aleksandr Blok among others). His translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky have received the Columbia University Slavic Department Pushkin Prize. Blockade Swallow, selected poems by Olga Berggolts translated by Gushchin, appeared from Smokestack Books in 2022. His writing has appeared in Cardinal Points, The Birch, and elsewhere.