📣 Attention, attention! On March 11 at 7:00 PM, we are delighted to welcome a dear friend of the White Rabbit — Maxim Matusevich, Professor of History and Department Chair at Seton Hall University, and now also a fiction writer!Maxim will present his debut collection of short stories and novellas Six Trains of No Return (Academic Studies Press, 2026).
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 Department Chair at Seton Hall University. He is the author of two scholarly books and numerous articles on African–Soviet encounters and the history of race during the Cold War. 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 jail 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.
The conversation with Maxim will be moderated and led by Nathaniel Knight.
Nathaniel Knight teaches Russian History at Seton Hall University. He is a specialist on the history of Russian ethnography and has published extensively on topics including Russian orientalism, ethnographic exhibitions, the concept of the intelligentsia, Siberian exploration, and visual representations of ethnicity. His exhibit highlighting recently uncovered early ethnographic images of Ukrainian society was shown at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and is currently on display at the Seton Hall University Library.
🎟 Admission: $10 — all proceeds support the White Rabbit.
Please note that our space is small and cozy, so advance tickets are highly recommended to make sure you get in.
“From frozen Helsinki to balmy Cambodia, from Soviet army barracks to Hebrew language classes, Matusevich’s short story collection traces the places where lives collide and care takes unexpected forms. Matusevich is a master portraitist and his Six Trains of No Return is a profound meditation on the strangeness of human connection.” Sasha Vasilyuk, author of Your Presence Is Mandatory
“Bracingly funny and quietly devastating, the characters in this indelible collection bring to life a whole teeming post-Soviet world, while reminding us what is most stubbornly human. The stories dance on the heads of history’s rustiest pins, alive to irony, affection, and moral risk: a woman weaponizes her suffering to the point that even death feels like theater; a caretaker whose devotion to an impractical genius becomes the deepest expression of friendship and self; a fearless brawler undone not by prison or punishment but, finally, by American popular culture; a phone call in which an entire imagined life collapses under the weight of factual correction, yet refuses to collapse completely. Masterful in its ability to provoke unanswerable questions about memory, loyalty, victimhood, and belonging, this is irresistible reading, written not to console but to illuminate the deeper truths we live with long after the official story is over.” Sana Krasikov, author of The Patriots
“The people in Maxim Matusevich’s Six Trains of No Return are poignant in both triumph and failure, whether in need of romance, spiritual comfort, sex, or booze, from the hesitant to those unashamed to reach out and take. These are characters who limp, jump, and soar off the page, from a diffident army recruit to a Walmart shopper, in locales ranging from Russia and Nigeria to Israel and the United States. As a Russian émigré, Matusevich shows us again and again how the personal depends on the political, even in the bedroom. It’s funny and sad and deeply affecting and may be the best book you’ll read all year.” David Galef, author of Where I Went Wrong
We look forward to seeing you!
Event Venue
200 W 86th St New York NY 10024, Manhattan, NY, United States, New York 10024
Tickets
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