Hope Against Hope

By Nadezhda Mandelstam , Max Hayward ,

Book cover of Hope Against Hope: A Memoir

Book description

'Suddently, at about one o'clock in the morning, there was a sharp, unbearably explicit knock on the door. 'They've come for Osip', I said'.

In 1933 the poet Osip Mandelstam- friend to Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova- wrote a spirited satire denouncing Josef Stalin. It proved to be a sixteen-line…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Hope Against Hope as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Written by the wife of Russia’s great poet, Osip Mandelstam, this book is one of the most important—and brilliant--memoirs of the Stalin years. Perhaps more than any other book, it captures the atmosphere of fear and terror that surrounded members of the creative intelligentsia under Stalin.

From Lynne's list on Stalin’s Great Terror.

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