A Myth of Messina

An autobiographical novel of growing up in the Russian community of Richmond, Maine.

Nestor Strannikov, a teenage son of Russian immigrants, is about to graduate from high school in a small town in Cold War America. Caught between his mother’s obsession with Russian tradition and his father’s desire to assimilate and prove himself as an American citizen, Nestor confronts the rites of passage of second-generation sons and daughters of immigrants. Created in retrospect from the milieu of the Russian émigré community of Richmond, Maine, this is the story of a young adult, wise beyond his years, whose precocity adds yet another layer to his alienation—mitigated by his relationship with Morgana Lafey. Mysterious events seem to reach out of the past to assist him in his quest. As Nestor, Nikolai Dejevsky navigates between authentic memory and imagination, reflecting the changing identity of the American Dream.

“In Dejevsky’s hands, the myth assumes the colourful mantle of a new reality, reminiscent of the intellectual sharpness of Joyce’s Ulysses, and the elegance and elegiac quality of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory. It explores with gentle humour and sympathy the Russian émigré experience, but goes well beyond, capturing the excitement of human enquiry and discovery, the understanding of self, one’s destiny and place in humanity and the universe.”

—Brook Horowitz, Executive Director of the International Business Leaders Forum in Russia and Trustee of Pushkin House, London

A Myth of Messina: Echoes of Russian Richmond by Nikolai Dejevsky, 216 pp Quality Paperback, ISBN 978-1-882190-18-8 US $14.95