Contemporary – what? Isn’t it like saying, “a thirty-something teenager?” 🙂

History is supposed to be historical. Not oxymoronic.

But there are many kinds of yesterday.

To me, “contemporary history,” is the still young times, the thirty-something times. The  cars, the television, the language that includes terms like, “speaking like a robot,” or “pushing one’s buttons.” If you’re a teen now, those are the times when your parents were kids, and your parents are pretty much out now, making their mark on the world, aren’t they? So, in that way, those times are alive.

I love poetry and science fiction, and when I was a kid, I cried over Alexandre Dumas’ “Three Musketeers,” when I wasn’t busy reading George Sand, Moliere and Voltaire. Now though, I am drawn to recent history, the day before yesterday, the not-quite-last-week.

The country of my birth, the U.S.S.R, is featured in both novels I have written/am working on. The country doesn’t exist any longer. But it isn’t gone. If you look  closely at today’s Russia, underneath the glamour of the sparkly new nightclubs,  the good clothes and the in-your-face capitalism, you will see my Soviet childhood. Maybe that’s  why contemporary history fascinates me. The times that are gone, but are still there. Kind of like so many parts of me.