Why read Hope Against Hope?

Book cover of Hope Against Hope: A Memoir

Book description

'Suddently, at about one o'clock in the morning, there was a sharp, unbearably explicit knock on the door. 'They've come for Osip', I said'.

In 1933 the poet Osip Mandelstam- friend to Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova- wrote a spirited satire denouncing Josef Stalin. It proved to be a sixteen-line…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Hope Against Hope as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Catherine Ann Jones

Author

I first read this book decades ago and never forgot it.

When the Russian poets under Stalin, not allowed to write or publish their own poems, once met secretly in Mandelstam’s kitchen to recite their poems. The only food was one boiled egg, which sat on the table between the few poets. And no one ate the egg! Integrity above poverty and famine. Stalin was responsible for sending creatives to Siberia, where so many died- including Osip Mandelstam.

The widow of the great Russian poet and martyr, Osip Mandelstam, gives us the most luminous record of the purges in Russia…

From Catherine's list on Catherine Ann Jones' favorite memoirs by those who made a difference.

Lynne Viola

Author

Written by the wife of Russia’s great poet, Osip Mandelstam, this book is one of the most important—and brilliant--memoirs of the Stalin years. Perhaps more than any other book, it captures the atmosphere of fear and terror that surrounded members of the creative intelligentsia under Stalin.

From Lynne's list on The best books on Stalin’s Great Terror.