Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by 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 Novorossiysk, 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 emigre 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. 

BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week

"Wonderfully idiosyncratic, coolly heartfelt and memorable" William Boyd

"One of the great writers of early 20th Century Russia" Simon Sebag Montefiore

"A remarkable memoir...both potent and endearing" Erica Wagner, New Statesman