«Six Trains of No Return» Maxim Matusevich

Maxim Matusevich was born and raised in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and emigrated to the United States in 1991, as the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse. He is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Seton Hall University. A specialist in African–Soviet encounters and the history of race during the Cold War, he is the author of two scholarly books and numerous articles on global Cold War history. His fellowships and residencies include the Fulbright Program (Russia), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at NYU (Writer-in-Residence), and the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University, where he was a Sheila Biddle Ford Research Fellow.

In addition to his academic work, Maxim Matusevich writes fiction. His short stories, novellas, and essays have appeared in literary magazines in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and elsewhere, including The Kenyon Review, New England Review, BigCityLit, San Antonio Review, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, among many others.

Six Trains of No Return (Academic Studies Press, 2026) is his debut work of fiction. The collection brings together twelve short stories and novellas that explore immigrant lives and dislocations that are at once deeply personal and broadly universal. These are stories of past lives and loves, of fragile and unreliable memories, and of individual destinies entwined with larger historical forces. The book evokes the Soviet Jewish experience during what was once imagined as the “End of History” in the waning days of the USSR. A French-Cambodian woman returns repeatedly to the killing fields of her youth; an encounter in a Nigerian J*il confronts a narrator with an impossible moral choice; three young conscripts form a tender friendship in the Soviet army; a chance romantic meeting resurrects long-buried schoolyard cruelties; and two soldiers, near the end of the Soviet era, watch Jaws for the first time in a semi-underground video salon. Emotionally resonant and edged with quiet humor, these stories meditate on displacement, belonging, and memory, speaking across cultures and histories.

📅 March 19 | 7.30pm (doors: 7pm)
🍷 BYOB
🎟️ Ticket: $10
Ticket & Book: $40
📍 Kvartira Books, 731 Washington Ave, 11238, Brooklyn NY

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