Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood

“Brilliantly translated… Voloshin attempts to come to grips with the sweep of the twentieth century, from the Revolution to Pearl Harbor. … This is the book that will make his reputation in the West.”
—Cynthia Haven, Times Literary Supplement

“Dralyuk’s translation is characteristically masterful."
—University Bookman

A bittersweet tale of war, survival, and the movies

With great wit and warmth, Alexander Voloshin’s Sidetracked provides unique insight into one of the major human dramas of the twentieth century: the escape of some two million refugees from the collapsing Russian Empire in the wake of the revolutions of 1917. A former officer in the White Army, Voloshin spent the late 1920s and 1930s struggling to make a living in Hollywood as an extra. His lively yet poignant poem follows his countrymen as they resist the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, suffer crushing defeat, and take flight—first to Europe, then to New York, and, eventually, to Los Angeles. The chapters devoted to the lives of émigrés in Hollywood, which Voloshin knew so well, are a priceless document of the town’s Golden Age, as viewed from the bottom up.

“Sidetracked is a masterpiece. Voloshin is a superbly funny and touching poet. Dralyuk reconstructs his life in photographs and in an engaging introduction, and brilliantly renders his poetry of yearning and resilience. This book speaks to all touched by the experience of emigration—that is, all of us—whether nostalgic for blini, pupusas, or lutefisk.”
—Jeffrey Brooks, author of The Firebird and the Fox

“Voloshin’s bright, ballad-like poem—beautifully rendered into English by the excellent Boris Dralyuk—reads like something from a time capsule. Running from Moscow to Odesa to Ellis Island, its artfully rhyming lines made me weep and smile and sigh. A thrilling read.”
—Henri Cole, author of Gravity and Center