Interview by David Carriere
After reading your memoir To the Midnight Sun: A Story of Revolution, Exile and Return I realized it must have taken you nearly a lifetime to complete this project from concept to finished bound book, but in a practical manner, how many years did you actually devote to seriously writing it?
Yes, a story like mine does take nearly a lifetime! The project really begins when you first become fascinated with the story and develop the ambitom—or perhaps the need—to tell it, which in my case was during childhood. That said, I spent about a year on the preliminary research when I returned to Russia in the 1990s and a similar amount of time gathering more background material, mostly historical, after I returned. After another break to get back to my medical work, which I had stepped back from for those couple of years, when I finally sat down to write it took me about four years to complete the manuscript.
As a working physician in New York City, I would imagine it is hard to consistently find time to write. It’s always fun to hear about a writer’s process, so please indulge me. When do you write? Only in the morning…or just nighttime…or maybe you are a binge writer?
Well, full disclosure—and not to discourage other aspiring writers with day jobs!—I did not begin writing seriously until I had retired from full time work. I have in fact continued to work in time-consuming roles in cancer research since, but only about half time. So I need to be flexible with the time I free up for writing, since the time commitments for my medical work can vary, but in general I am a morning person and I prefer to write early, before other distractions start rushing in.
You had to attend to facts and historical details throughout the book, yet it is chock-full of family memories and tender reminiscences, so between your desire to honor your grandmother Eda Bamuner-Saletan in this family memoir, and the historical documentation that you undertook for the project, was it hard to find your voice as a writer?
That is a great question and actually key to how I ultimately conceived the book. Or perhaps more accurately, how I found the project’s voice and shape in the process of writing. Of course, I wanted to tell the story of my grandmother’s amazing spirit and the adventures that spirit engendered, but I also wanted readers to understand the “why” of the story—to explain how my grandmother became the person she did. And at the same time, the historical framework was just so dramatic and amazing! I love periods in history that I think of as “transitional,” when people’s external circumstances and outlooks change very rapidly, leading to new eras. My grandmother was born into one such era, when Russia was modernizing very quickly, both economically and socially. And around the same time Russian Jews—few perhaps, but some—like my grandmother were finally beginning to enter the mainstream of society. So I do believe that the effect of that intense transitional period had a lot to do with who and what she became, and I wanted the give readers a window onto that.
My grandparents were deceased before I was born, so I enjoyed reading about your relationship with your paternal grandmother. There were even a few pages when I almost lived vicariously through your writing as I thought to myself: “Oh, this is what it would have been like to have a grandmother!” That said, yours was not a typical grandmother, so please tell us your favorite kitchen table memory of her.
That question touches my heart! I relived some of those kitchen memories as I wrote the book, and asking me to think back to them again evokes the same vivid images and emotions. There was so much warmth, along with a kind of grandeur, to her presence, and the scenes I describe in the book took place in our little—literally very small!—suburban tract house kitchen, which created a kind of intense and alluring contrast to the woman who had come to see us, care for us, and share the amazing stories of her life. The memories kind of blend, but it is always the image of that little kitchen, with this rather grand, slightly European-accented, but ineffably warm and loving woman, sitting with her young grandchildren as the daylight faded, that remains.
From studying Russian as an adult to travelling Russia to research the book, please talk about your extensive commitment to the work as a literary endeavor.
Well, I think most books take an extensive level of commitment! The things I had to do to create the different parts of book sort of fell into place on their own, as I moved from one core element to another. I didn’t understand fully until I returned to Russia in the 1990s how critical that experience was going to be to my understanding—or perhaps more accurately, feeling—the story I was trying to tell, which had a lot to do with my grandmother’s ambivalence about leaving Russia in the first place and her lifelong attachment to its language and culture. I had been hearing Russian since I was a child and always loved its sound, so learning the language was something I’d been planning to get around to for decades. The necessity of learning Russian in order to communicate with my relatives and other folks and understand the documents I was looking at just kind of dovetailed with that passion. The historical research was similarly both a necessity and a labor of love. I think the books we write make their own demands on us. I could have chosen something easier as a first book, but once you set off on a journey like this, it sweeps you up and carries you along.
Can you talk about the influence your family history has on your own personal identity as an American in 2025?
I have a strong feeling we are entering a period of transition, as I talked about a little earlier. So our identities as citizens of our countries and the world are probably in a state of flux. Russia played a pretty pivotal role in history, from around 1800 or so until the end of the Cold War, and then suddenly was reduced to a bit of a has-been, as had been the case with other major European powers. Which always creates a period of intense adjustment, often with negative consequencs. We are seeing that now in Russia with Putin’s reign and the monstrous war he has unleashed. So one thing, I think, is that as the world tries to cope with a somewhat resurgent but destructive and dangerous Russia, people will want to learn more about how we got here. And the reminders in the book that so much of Russian history was built around good people protesting the country’s bad politics might be of great relevance now. How does this affect my own identity? More than anything, I think it goes to that last point. We have to keep our values intact and do what we can to resist dangerous trends that threaten the welfare of our country and our fellow citizens.
Eda was a revolutionary who had to flee Russia due to her political activities. Can you talk about that?
I think that question relates to what we just talked about, in the sense that if one takes up the challenge to resist dangerous trends and destructive forces, there are risks involved. There was another side to the fact that she had to flee, which I talk about a bit in the book, that it actually opened up a whole new life and wider world for her. There was some kind of determination in her both to fight for justice but also to seek new adventures and a new life, a thirst for learning and the unknown. I picked up some—or maybe a lot—of that from her.
During her years as a revolutionary, she actually had a love affair with a major Russian military figure. Can you expand on that?
It is indeed fascinating and amazing that she met this young revolutionary, Kliment Voroshilov, who became so prominent later, and that they became lovers in that remote village during their summer of exile together. Voroshilov went on to become a famous Bolshevik, one of the few to survive Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. As to how much contact my grandmother had with him when she returned to Russia in the 1930s and 1950s, I am still not sure. There are family stories about it, furtive meetings in Gorky Park in Moscow, etc. but one of the reasons I went back to Russian in the 90s was to search the archives to find documentation for the stories I ultimately included in the book. No hearsay. As things turned out, I couldn’t find any files with reports about my grandmother and Voroshilov except the one about their first encounter in the little city of Mezen in 1909.
As a woman who was ahead of her time, where do you think her convictions came from? Nurture or nature?
We talked about this a little earlier, when I explained how she grew up during a period of tremendous transition in Russian and world history. So in that sense I ascribed her convictions and actions to nurture to a large extent. But she had a unique character and was very much her own person. To sum up, let me quote one brief passage from the book, slightly paraphrased, which comes right after I describe how the times had shaped her outlook: “At the same time, of equal or perhaps even greater importance was her own character. History shapes individuals, but individuals shape their own histories.”
Are you a compulsive reader? How do you most enjoy reading books? Do you lean towards new releases? Hardcover, paperback or tablet? What are you currently reading?
I wish I had enough time to be a compulsive reader! I definitely prefer reading physical books, hardcover or paperback, rather than tablets. Ideally, lying on a sofa with soft classical music playing in the background. I keep my eye out for new releases by reading book reviews in newspapers and literary journals and through recommendations from friends. But going back to the classics is always tempting. There are still a few I never got around to in college, and a few I would gladly re-read whenever I have the time—The Brothers Karamazov and In Search of Lost Time to give just a couple of obvious examples. I just finished C.V. Wedgwood’s remarkably vivid The Thirty Years War, a beautiful example of narrative history writing, and am awaiting the arrival of a new novel by an Irish writer that reimagines an episode in the history of ancient Athens, centered around the work of the playwright Euripides.
Are you writing another book?
I haven’t started my next book quite yet. I’m looking for a time in history that fits the mold I talked about ealier, a period of transition. And a great story inside that frame. Maybe it will turn out to be contemporary, who knows? It will undoubtedly come to me when I’m out walking in Central Park or along the bank of the Hudson River one sunny afternoon.
Stephen Saletan attended Harvard Medical School and completed his post-graduate training in oncology. A resident of Manhattan, he is also a graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism.