Two Babushkas: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace - Tapa blanda

'Her book is truly exceptional, and deserves a prize' Independent '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 'It's a thoughtful, thought-provoking book with an excellent sense of time and place' Choice 'The book is held together by the twin themes of compromise and survival' Virginia Rounding, Guardian

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.