The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain
Yevgeny just wants to study art, but first he has to prove to his parents that he’d make a terrible ballet dancer!
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What the Book Is About
Jewish Content & Values
Content Advisory
What the Book Is About
Narrating from a child’s point of view, Russian-American Eugene Yelchin (“Yevgeny”) recounts his years as a Jewish kid growing up in Cold War Russia. The “genius under the table,” he would draw pictures on the underside of the table he slept beneath in his family’s tiny living space. The short, episodic chapters are funny, kid-centered, and entertaining, and humorous drawings on almost every page help lighten the sobering facts of life for Jews in the former Soviet Union. A captivating autobiography of an artist’s young beginnings.
Jewish Content & Values
- Yevgeny’s family’s Jewishness and the antisemitism they are subjected to are central to the book, a memoir set in the former Soviet Union in the 1960s.
- Yevgeny’s grandmother uses Yiddish and Hebrew words and phrases (shtick, dreck, meshugeneh, mazel tov).
Content Advisory
Yelchin’s memoir deals with the harsh reality of life for Jews in the former Soviet Union – mainly antisemitism, but also the general difficulties of living behind the Iron Curtain. In the harshest example, Yevgeny’s father waits all night in the cold to get a poetry book, then dies of pneumonia. Overall, though, the narrative contains a surprising and uplifting amount of humor.
What the Book Is About
What the Book Is About
Narrating from a child’s point of view, Russian-American Eugene Yelchin (“Yevgeny”) recounts his years as a Jewish kid growing up in Cold War Russia. The “genius under the table,” he would draw pictures on the underside of the table he slept beneath in his family’s tiny living space. The short, episodic chapters are funny, kid-centered, and entertaining, and humorous drawings on almost every page help lighten the sobering facts of life for Jews in the former Soviet Union. A captivating autobiography of an artist’s young beginnings.
Jewish Content & Values
Jewish Content & Values
- Yevgeny’s family’s Jewishness and the antisemitism they are subjected to are central to the book, a memoir set in the former Soviet Union in the 1960s.
- Yevgeny’s grandmother uses Yiddish and Hebrew words and phrases (shtick, dreck, meshugeneh, mazel tov).
Content Advisory
Content Advisory
Yelchin’s memoir deals with the harsh reality of life for Jews in the former Soviet Union – mainly antisemitism, but also the general difficulties of living behind the Iron Curtain. In the harshest example, Yevgeny’s father waits all night in the cold to get a poetry book, then dies of pneumonia. Overall, though, the narrative contains a surprising and uplifting amount of humor.
