Written for the Drawer

Russian-Jewish writer Leonid Tsypkin (192682), a doctor by trade, wrote primarily for the drawer, fearing professional consequences if he were to publish his fiction. Despite Tsypkins almost complete lack of readership during his lifetime, his work has received international posthumous recognition, with Susan Sontag calling his work among the most beautiful, exalting, and original achievements of a centurys worth of fiction. Tsypkins autobiographical writing explored the impossibility of being both a Russian writer and a Soviet Jew, employing both indirection and referentiality. In the first full-length book on his work, Brett Winestock considers Tsypkins fiction as part of a transnational literary response to the horrors of the twentieth century, a reception that helps explain his much-belated international readership. Through close readings of Tsypkins work in the context of late-Soviet cultural worlds, Winestock makes an important contribution to studies of Jewish Soviet writing and identity.