Stalin's Children
Author(s): Owen Matthews
On a midsummer day in 1937, the young Commissar Boris Bibikov kissed his two daughters goodbye and disappeared into the official Packard waiting outside. It was the last time his family ever saw him. Arrested by Stalin's secret police, the loyal Party man confessed to a grotesque series of crimes against the Revolution. His wife, an Enemy of the People by association, was sent to the gulag, leaving the young Lyudmila and Lenina alone to face separation in a world turned suddenly cold. Lyudmila grew up a fighter, and when she fell in love with a tall young foreigner in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, she knew there would be further battles ahead.Naively infatuated with Russia, Mervyn Matthews had embarked on a dangerous flirtation with the KGB. But when finally asked to work for the organisation, he refused. Revenge came quickly: Mervyn was thrown out of the country; Lyudmila lost her job. For six years, stranded on opposite sides of the ideological divide that shaped their generation, they kept their love alive in a daily stream of letters - some anguished, some funny, but all suffused with a hope that they would eventually be reunited.
Product Information
The facts of Russia and the Cold War are made personal and relevant in this deeply personal account - appealing to a broad market of anyone interested in life behind the Iron Curtain. A page-turning read of three generations, in the style of Jung Chang's bestselling Wild Swans, and brilliantly gripping about the seedy underbelly of Russian culture and politics Combines the harrowing historical events of the gulags, covered by Applebaum and Solzhenitsyn, with a heartbreaking love story; reminiscent of The Lives of Others.
Shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award 2008 and Orwell Prize 2009.
'Heartbreaking, romantic and utterly compelling' Simon Sebag Monefiore
Owen Matthews was born in London and spent part of his childhood in America. He studied Modern History at Oxford University before beginning his career as a journalist in Bosnia. In 1995 he accepted a job at The Moscow Times, a daily English-language newspaper. He also freelanced for a number of publications including The Times, the Spectator and the Independent. In 1997, he became a correspondent at Newsweek magazine in Moscow where he covered the second Chechen war, as well as politics and society. Owen was also one of the first journalists to witness the start of the US bombing in the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan, 2001, and went on to cover the invasion of Iraq, 2003. Owen is currently Newsweek magazine's bureau chief in Moscow, where he lives with his wife and two children.
General Fields
- :
- : Bloomsbury Press
- : Bloomsbury Press
- : 02 June 2008
- : 216mm X 135mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : Owen Matthews
- : Hardback
- : 947.084092
- : 320
- : Illustrations
