“Ann Lauterbach’s Saint Petersburg Notebook investigates both the psychic landscape and character of the post-soviet human and the travelling writer’s own estrangement from self and time during the white nights. Her observations of Russians’ muteness or lack of expressivity, the hollowness of their cultural spine, and their desire to be superficially European strangely echo the Marquis de Custine’s 19th-century critical travelogue. The porous space of Petersburg, cast in oblique light, is palpable as an unsettling dream in this brief, haunted notebook.”— Matvei Yankelevich, translator of Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms