David Lyalin's Blog

How It All Began

Q: How did it all begin? Was there a key memory or story that sparked the idea for the book? What was the “end of the thread” you pulled on—the one that unraveled a tangle of memories? How did the idea to write a book first come about?

A: I had never written prose before. But I had always written a lot for work: scientific articles, reports, memos, analytical briefs. For over thirty years now, I’ve written all of those in English—writing in Russian had become a thing of the past. And I’ve always read a great deal, though lately, less and less in Russian. In my past and present life—on both sides of the ocean—people praised my utilitarian writing style for its clarity and logic.

When the pandemic hit and everything felt uncertain and unsteady, I felt an urge to share some family stories with my daughter—and especially with my grandchildren, whom I hadn’t seen in many months. That desire, combined with an unjustified confidence drawn from compliments on my professional writing, somehow nudged me into trying my hand at prose. Naturally, I began writing for them in English, and my first story—My Yiddish—took me three or four months to wrestle onto the page. But that experiment convinced me that to write about those long-ago times in Russia, I had to use Russian—the language in which everyone I was writing about had thought, spoken, and felt. Including me.

To my surprise, writing in Russian again—after a break of three decades—turned out to be much easier than I expected. Within about half a year, fitting it in between work obligations, I had written the first six stories. My family and close friends, including my daughter—a professional writer—liked them (or at least, that’s what they told me). And that’s what really mattered! These and the later stories—or rather, their early versions—were published in the online journals Notes on Jewish History (Заметки по еврейской истории) and Jewish Heritage (Еврейская старина).

Then came the question of translation. My grandchildren—the very ones to whom this book is dedicated—don’t speak Russian. And if I wanted them to be able to read it one day, I had to translate it. That turned out to be much harder than I expected. Translating prose into a non-native language—even one you speak reasonably well—isn’t just about conveying meaning. It’s about recreating tone, preserving humor, wordplay, cultural nuance. But I wanted my grandchildren to read my translation—with all its flaws, but also with my personal choices, emphases, and explanations. And that’s how the stories in this book became bilingual.

About Tales of a Grandfather Who Once Upon a Time Was a Grandson Himself