Anastasia Edel

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Anastasia Edel grew up in southern Russia during the last years of the Soviet Union. She’s the author of Russia: Putin’s Playground (2016). Her prose has appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Project Syndicate Quartz, and World Literature Today. She teaches Russian culture and history at UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Therapy by Living

Winter 2020
Anastasia Edel
Photo: Luiz Guimaraes / Unsplash Follow a writer-flâneuse on a New York City odyssey, appreciating life’s smaller miracles in a city with many entry points. West 32nd / Broadway. The hotel d…
What to Read Now: When Civilization Fails

January 2017
Anastasia Edel
With two world wars, revolutions, famines, colonial violence, and state-sponsored genocides, the twentieth century was the most murderous in history, claiming the lives of some two hundred million peo…
A Broken Foot, a Hex Wrench, and Baby Gaggia

May 2016
Anastasia Edel
A broken foot is poor luck and a nuisance. It cancels everything from hikes to trips to Germany. It gives your insurance company an opportunity to feast and acquaints you with an orthopedist, often m…
Three Quintessential Books to Add to Your “Russian Masters” List

March 2016
Anastasia Edel
It is not unusual for those on a quest to understand Russia to plough through Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy; the more adventurous add Bulgakov and Pasternak to their lists. Yet Russia of the twent…
Blurring the Real and the Fantastic: Victor Pelevin’s The Blue Lantern and Other Stories

December 9, 2015 Anastasia Edel
Victor Pelevin is one of the most interesting writers to have come out of contemporary Russia. Though not widely known in the West, Pelevin is a cultural phenomenon in his native land; his work is rea…