01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, April 24, 2004

BY ANDY SMITH
Journal Arts Writer

David Shrayer-Petrov is simultaneously a Russian writer, a Jewish writer, an American writer. It's a combination that creates a unique perspective in his recent book of short stories, Jonah and Sarah: Jewish Stories of Russia and America.

"I think you get a certain angle of vision that comes from being astride more than one culture," said his son, Maxim D. Shrayer, a professor of Russian and English at Boston College, who edited and translated his father's book.

"I am not in the middle, I am in both. I am staying very distinctly in both cultures," Shrayer-Petrov said in an interview Thursday at his son's home near the Boston College campus.

In one of his stories "Hurricane Bob," set on Cape Cod, a Russian immigrant is trying to deal with both a threatening storm in New England and an impending coup in the Soviet Union, his attention divided between the old country and the new.

In "Old Writer Foreman," an emigre Russian writer is inspired by (of all people) boxer George Foreman.

Both father and son will speak tomorrow at Brown University/Providence Journal Public Affairs Conference on "The Immigrant Experience through Arts and Culture."

Both have strong Brown connections: David Shrayer-Petrov, 68, is a medical research scientist at Brown; Maxim D. Shrayer, 36, received his BA from Brown in comparative literature.

Shrayer-Petrov spent years as a refusenik in the former Soviet Union. In 1978 he wrote a poem called "My Slavic Soul in a Jewish Skin" that dealt with the troubling issue of anti-Semitism and Jewish identity.

The poem, among other works, put Shrayer-Petrov squarely at odds with Soviet authority. When he applied for permission to emigrate in 1979, he was refused, and expelled from both the Union of Soviet Writers and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

He found work in an emergency room lab, and drove an illegal cab at night. Meanwhile, he continued to write.

His life as a refusenik provided material for a major novel, Herbert and Nelly, which deals with Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union. (Published in post-Soviet Russia in 1992, the novel still awaits its English translation.)

In 1987, the Shrayer family finally obtained permission to leave the Soviet Union.

"I am a Russian writer, but my soul is the Russian/Jewish soul," Shrayer-Petrov said. "I'm still a Russian Jew, and all of the stories are written from that Russian/Jewish computer.

"I can't write from the position of an American/Irishman, or an American/Arab. I have to write from the specific area I know."

Jonah and Sarah consists of stories written between 1985 and 1995, a period which includes stories written in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

Some of the earlier stories include a distinct element of fantasy. In "Dismemberers," a writer's typewriter takes on a life of its own.

In the title story, a disgraced composer wanders the forests of "The Great Expanse," trying to create new insruments out of tree branches and befriending a mysterious badger.

Shrayer-Petrov invented his own term for this work -- "fantella," which he describes as a novella that contains elements of fantasy.

Maxim Shrayer said the approach may have been fueled by the absurdity of a refusenik's life, being an outcast, yet refused permission to leave.

Since the fall of Communism, both father and son have returned to the former Soviet Union. Shrayer-Petrov has been back twice, in 1999 and 2002.

"I was very, very nervous," Shrayer-Petrov said. "But finally, because of language, because of friends, I started to feel more comfortable. . . . I was happy to be there, but I kept thinking 'I've got to get back home.' "

America had become home.

"When we were in Russia, we felt like foreigners -- but foreigners who got it all," Maxim Shrayer said.

David Shrayer-Petrov still writes fiction and poetry in Russian, although his scientific papers are written in English. Jonah and Sarah is the first of his books to be published in English.

Maxim Shrayer, a writer himself, said the two worked well together. "We never clashed, but there were things that had to be negotiated between translator and author," Maxim Shrayer said. "Sometimes I would call and say 'We've got to tweak it a little.' "

For example, Shrayer said, ethnic conflicts that a Russian reader would immediately understand simply by reading the characters' names needed a touch more clarification for English readers.

Shrayer said his father's later stories, set in the United States, were easier to translate.

Does Shrayer-Petrov miss Russia?

"Very much. In spite of everything," he said. "I miss it like you might miss your childhood. All my family graves are in Russia."

That does not mean that he wants to return permanently. He's an American writer now -- and he's even thinking about writing a screenplay.

Maxim Shrayer pointed out that the former Soviet Union has never dealt with its anti-Semitism. Even now, he said, stories with Jewish themes are generally only found in Jewish literary journals.

In this country, his father said, it is far easier to be "a man of the whole world" than it is in Russia.

David Shrayer-Petrov and Maxim Shrayer will present a reading and discussion at Brown Hillel, 80 Brown St., tomorrow at 3 p.m.