Set in part in Riverwest and entirely in Milwaukee, the debut novel by Zhanna Slor, At the End of the World, Turn Left is a literary mystery about a pair of Russian sisters in our city who immigrated here with their parents as children. They get tangled up in their father’s questionable Soviet past. Given the author’s heritage, what’s the relationship between her and her protagonist, Anna.
“I will be the first to admit there are some autobiographical elements to my novel,” Slor says. Anna is very similar to myself at 19 (though far more likable and adventurous!), and there are also probably a few people who might recognize a version of themselves in the characters as well. Besides that, though—it’s all very much fiction. I wish my life was this exciting!"
At the End of the World, Turn Left is an exploration of immigrant and Jewish identity.
“It was very important to me to write about a normal immigrant family from the former USSR, specifically a Jewish one, because I think most people imagine Russian people as mobsters or prostitutes—that’s generally a Russian person’s role in a film or TV show,” Slor says. “I got very frustrated with this growing up, because we are not all in the mob or related to mobsters. That lack of diversity was definitely a consideration, because I didn’t want the plot to fall into any of these easy tropes.
“But more importantly, there is very little reflection in literature (and film) on this specific (and huge) population of people who left a country they could never return to—that country no longer exists. What do you call home if your homeland no longer exists? I find this question as fascinating as it is troubling. Those of us who came in the 1990s—either to the US, or like many others, to Israel—left a country that no longer looks the same way or functions in the same way. So can you really call it your home? If your country has a different name, a new currency, even a new way of governing? I’m not sure.”
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At the End of the World, Turn Left is published by Polis/Agora, an indie house dedicated to finding new fiction authors. Slor will discuss her book on April 20 on the outdoor patio of Sugar Maple, sponsored by Lion’s Tooth Bookstore.
