Metro Stop Dostoevsky

A Russian American writer catapults herself into the maelstrom of Russian life at a time of seismic change for bothThe daughter of Russian emigres, Ingrid Bengis grew up wondering whether she was American or, deep down, "e;really Russian."e; In 1991, naively in love with Russia and Russian literature, she settled in St. Petersburg, where she was quickly immersed in "e;catastroika,"e; a period of immense turmoil that mirrored her own increasingly complex and contradictory experience. Bengis's account of her involvement with Russia is heightened by her involvement with B, a Russian whose collapsing marriage, paralleling the collapse of the Soviet Union, produces a situation in which "e;anything could happen."e; Their relationship reflects the social tumult, as well as the sometimes dangerous consequences of American "e;good intentions."e; As Bengis takes part in Russian life-becoming a reluctant entrepreneur, undergoing surgery in a St. Petersburg hospital, descending into a coal mine-she becomes increasingly aware of its Dostoevskian duality, never more so than when she meets the impoverished, importuning great-great-granddaughter of the writer himself. Beneath the seismic shifting remains a centuries-old preoccuption with "e;the big questions"e;: tradition and progress, destiny and activism, skepticism and faith. With its elaborate pattern of digression and its eye for the revealing detail, Bengis's account has the hypnotic intimacy of a late-night conversation in a Russian kitchen, where such questions are perpetually being asked.