Memories From Moscow to the Black Sea

An enthralling, elegant, emotional account of a journey into exile, by the wonderful Teffi Moscow, 1918. Following the Revolution, people are leaving the city in droves - bound for the Black Sea, and from there to Europe and beyond. In late autumn, the celebrated writer Teffi is invited on a reading tour; having elegantly navigated the bureaucratic waters for her visa, she spends the winter travelling from Moscow to Kiev, and from there to Odessa and on to Novorossisk, first by train and then by ship. On the shores of the Black Sea, as Spring arrives, Teffi is advised to go abroad for a time, until things have settled down in Russia. She reluctantly agrees, not fully realising that this would be the beginning of her permanent exile from her beloved country. The great Teffi's memoir of her last months in Russia is, for all its melancholy, marked by her characteristic wit, sense of irony and generosity of spirit. Her descriptions of her journey across two thousand miles of Russia, during which she encounters illness, hardship and sorrow in the company of a multitude of refugees, are almost unbearably moving at times - but also irresistibly vivid, and utterly unforgettable. Teffi (1872-1952) wrote poems, plays, stories, satires and feuilletons, and was renowned in Russia for her wit and powers of observation. Following her emigration in 1919 she settled in Paris, where she became a leading figure in the ŽmigrŽ literary scene. Now her genius has been rediscovered by a new generation of readers, and she once again enjoys huge acclaim in Russia and across the world. Her short-story collection Subtly Worded is also published by Pushkin Press, and the non-fiction collection Rasputin and Other Ironies will also be published in May 2016.

An enthralling, elegant, emotional account of a journey into exile BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'Wonderfully idiosyncratic, coolly heartfelt and memorable' William Boyd'I never imagined such a memoir could be possible... enthralling' Antony Beevor'A vividly idiosyncratic personal account of the disintegration of Tsarist Russia after the Revolution, as alive to the farcical and the ridiculous as it is to the tragic; a bit like what Chekhov might have written if he had lived to experience it' Michael Frayn The writer and satirist Teffi was a literary sensation in Russia until war and revolution forced her to leave her country for ever. Memories is her blackly funny and heartbreaking account of her final, frantic journey into exile across Russia-travelling by cart, freight train and rickety steamer-and the 'ordinary and unheroic' people she encounters. From refugees setting up camp on a dockside to a singer desperately buying a few 'last scraps' of fabric to make a dress, all are caught up in the whirlwind; all are immortalized by Teffi's penetrating gaze. Fusing exuberant wit and bitter horror, this is an extraordinary portrayal of what it means to say goodbye, with haunting relevance in today's new age of diaspora. Published in English for the first time, it confirms the rediscovery of Teffi as one of the most humane, perceptive observers of her time, and an essential writer for ours.