Hope against Hope
This moving memoir by the poet`s wife documents the life of the major 20th-century Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. Beginning four years before he was exiled for writing a satirical poem about Stalin, this memoir describes the oppressive environment of Russia during the Stalinist years, and includes a recollection of the entry of the secret police into their home in 1933. While this memoir is a personal portrait of the life of an important poet, Nadezhda Mandelstam transcends her oppression under the regime to describe the environment of Stalinism in general.

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