Table of Contents
I. The Cherry Orchard of Victory
2. Knippers and Chekhovs
3. Mikhail Chekhov
4. Misha and Olga
5. The Beginning of a Revolution
6. The End of a Marriage
7. Frost and Famine
8. Surviving the Civil War
9. The Dangers of Exile
10. The Far-Flung Family
11. The Early 1920s in Moscow and Berlin
12. Home Thoughts from Abroad
13. The End of Political Innocence
14. The Totalitarian Years
15. The Great Terror
16. Enemy Aliens
17. Moscow 1941
18. A Family Divided by War
19. Berlin and Moscow 1945
20. Return to Berlin
21. After the War
Praise for
“This was an extraordinary life, which Mr. Beevor handles with disciplined speculation.
”—
“An extraordinary drama of exile and espionage, celebrity and concealment... . As in the
—Boyd Tonkin,
“Beevor has clearly enjoyed picking through the legends and his fascination with Chekhova’s story shines through. ”
—Anne Applebaum,
“Beevor’s work is, above all, the fascinating story of an extraordinary family living through extraordinary times. On those grounds alone it’s a great read. Families, as so many novelists have discovered, provide a wonderful window into the past ... Beevor tells the story with seemingly effortless grace and it reads like the very best novels. He is a gifted writer and this is an enthralling tale. ”
—Gerard DeGroot,
“Antony Beevor’s engaging and revealing memoir ... tells the parallel stories of sister Olga and bother Lev with clarity and panache ... as engaging a read as
—David Edgar,
“This compelling work ... fascinates the reader by making Chekhova and her despicable brother Lev Knipper prisms through which one examines the degraded life of the citizens of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and explores the shadowy, morally ambiguous world of the Russian émigré. ... As in his other books, Antony Beevor is remarkably astute at digging out testimonies from living descendants and closed archives. ”
—Donald Rayfield, author of
“Beevor uses the story to evoke a world—the vague ideological borderlands of Nazism and Communism... . Exhibits Beevor’s big-book knack: he can write excitingly yet with restraint, and never resorts to grand guignol to grip you. ”
—Felipe Fernandez Armesto,
“Fascinating. An intricate, gracefully told and often moving social history of a talented family in times of revolution, civil war, dictatorship and world conflict. ”
—Rachel Polonsky,
“A true story that is dramatic, evocative and well worth unearthing” —