Marina Belozerskaya
AUTHOR

Marina Belozerskaya

Arts & Entertainment
Tap the gear icon above to manage new release emails.
I've always read books to travel to other places. Growing up in Moscow, in the Brezhnev era, I dove into books to escape the drabness and oppression of Soviet life. After emigrating to America and enrolling in high school in Boston, I read novels during math classes because I never like that subject, could get away with avoiding it in the more lenient American school, and sought greater excitement of the written word. Dispirited by academic politics as a graduate student and an aspiring professor, I found in reading and writing safe harbors of refuge and joy. A Bunting Fellowship (administered by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard) gave me an idea to devote myself to these forms of indulgence full-time. I did not think of myself as a born writer, not like people who begin constructing stories at age 5 and never stop. I was astonished when one day, chancing upon a tattered notebook I had brought with me from Russia, I opened its cover and read on its opening page: "Chapter 1 - How I began to write." My best friend and I spent countless afternoons creating an elaborate fictional world in which we were captains of a pirate ship, sailing across stormy seas and lording it over a motley crew that included Dumas' Three Musketeers, popular Russian bards, and other heroes of our youth. We embarked on these adventures first with the help of dolls, then paper cut-outs, then notebooks in which we feverishly scribbled our stories, inspired by all sorts of books we read, but especially those set in the past. I guess the desire to read and write about history has been with me since my childhood after all. History remains the subject of endless fascination for me, a driving motor behind my books, a lens through which I view the world around me. It might be my Russian roots, my emigrant's deracination, or just innate curiosity that always makes me wonder how things came about, and why.
Read more Read less
Not an Audible member?
From £7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Start your free 30-day trial

Best Sellers

Product list
  • Medusa's Gaze cover art

    Regular price: £18.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: £18.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for £0.00

Are you an author?

Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography.
Visit Amazon Author Central