'I loved this saga of two fascinating Russian-Jewish women making ends meet, making love, making homes, making agonizing compromises in the most terrible times of the twentieth century and much is in the telling: witty, colourful, tragic, seething with life and character, it is a little classic of storytelling' Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

'Her book is truly exceptional, and deserves a prize' Independent

Masha Gessen's last memory of Russia was the crowd of red-eyed relatives gathered at the airport in Moscow in 1981 to wave goodbye forever to her fourteen-year-old self, her brother and her parents.

Unwilling to have their children grow up bearing the weight of the same anti-Semitism that they and their parents had, Masha's mother and father were emigrating to America. But Russia was Masha's home and ten years later she returned to a changed country, and to her two grandmothers.

With intelligence and humour Masha Gessen unfolds the tale of these two women: both Eastern European Jews who lived through Polish and Russian anti-Semitism, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Stalin years and who bore unceasing intimidation and fear in very different ways but with similar courage, resourcefulness and sheer chutzpah.