4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings

"This is a well written and beautifully paced account. What sets it apart from the general personal accounts of what it is to leave one's country and take up a life in another, far from ones roots, is its well-read author's attention to detail. The writing is often so well balanced that the author is able to intimate the breathtaking history of the Russian people in a way that is always engaging and regularly fascinating. Vassilieff provides readers with some extraordinary anthropologically drawn detail without losing them in too much data. He reproduces some of the finest poetry and images of Russian and Chinese art and uses these to evoke or define his points and to raise the writing to the highest level. The reader appreciated the detail and the story held them from the opening chapter to the end. It is a story at once contemporary and reflective of the vast developments that occur in history. The author shows how human beings can rise and fall on the turn of a political card. The book resonates with life, recriminations are kept to the minimum and yet there is always enough to gather between the lines to allow for reflection.
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