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

Gessen, Masha

4.13

642 ratings by Goodreads

9780747570806: Two Babushkas: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747570809 ISBN 13: 9780747570806

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2005

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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.

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Review:

‘A loving memoir of two grandmothers that offers a penetrating look at two killer regimes ... wonderful’ -- William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

‘It’s a thoughtful, thought-provoking book with an excellent sense of time and place’ -- Choice

‘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

‘The story is grippingly told ... compellingly real ... Her book is truly exceptional, and deserves a prize’ -- Independent

About the Author:

Masha Gessen is the Russian correspondent for US World and News Report. She has been a contributor to Granta and is the author of Dead Again: The Russian Intelligentsia after Communism. She lives in Moscow.

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