Stalin is dead
“Rachel Shihor is the opposite of a misty-eyed writer,” writes Mona Reiserer in the Quarterly Conversation. “Her writing penetrates to the truth of the aches and anxieties all people share, though they must generally suffer them alone.” “There is no question that she is a great writer,” Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love, confirms, “Only a master could make such originality feel inevitable. The only question is why so few people have had the chance to read her.”
In Stalin is Dead, Shihor offers a medley of aphorisms, flash fiction, and short stories, carving out a slice of the world in which Kafka would feel at home. The characters that inhabit this world—reckless she-goats, morose fish, somnambulistic theologians, poignant old ladies, dying dictators, and dead poets, to name just a few—have nothing in common save for the fact that they instruct us on the human condition. Available at last in Ornan Rotem’s translation, these edifying stories, with all their sadness and humor, are a writer’s tour de force and a reader’s delight.
Reviews:
Asymptote
“Rachel Shihor refuses to shy away from hard truths, but there is still an unmistakable warmth in the way she treats her subjects. Her characters are not innocent (one of them is Stalin after all); on the contrary, they are subtly tainted and damaged by the mere fact of being human, of belonging to a species with a proven capacity for violence and injustice. Yet Shihor’s deep understanding of humanity’s weakness and cruelty does not overwhelm her portrait; instead it adds an additional dimension of authority to the candid, unsentimental fairness of her approach. . . . One gets the sense of a writer who observes life with clear, wakeful eyes, and who never averts them, no matter how distressing the things they see.”
Music and Literature
“Stalin Is Dead is a marvelous showcase for Shihor, who packs more prescience and incisiveness into her tiny pages than most writers would be lucky to conjure up in a doorstop-sized novel. . . . And it’s not only this style itself but the privileged position which Shihor affords it that, in a sea of deft character studies and neat turns of phrase, makes our immersion in her writing feel so worthwhile.”
Librería del balcón 