Authors: Owen Matthews
Stalin's Children (38 page)
But by far the biggest burden has fallen on my wife, Xenia. As long as she's known me, I have been writing this book. Two wars, two children and a move to a new country later, and I was still at it. Somehow she will have to get used to living with me alone, now that the book is finally born and out on its own in the world. I couldn't have done it without her.
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Owen Matthews was born in London and spent part of his childhood in America. He studied modern history at Oxford University before beginning his career as a journalist in Bosnia. In 1995, he accepted a job at the
Moscow Times,
a daily English language newspaper. He also freelanced for a number of publications including
The Times,
the
Spectator
and the
Independent.
In 1997, he became a correspondent at
Newsweek
magazine in Moscow, where he covered the second Chechen war, as well as politics and society. Owen was also one of the first journalists to witness the start of the US bombing of Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley in 2001, and went on to cover the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Owen is currently
Newsweek
magazine's bureau chief in Moscow, where he lives with his wife and two children.
‘A heartbreaking, romantic and utterly compelling piece of reportage that superbly tells the story of four generations . . . an astonishing personal history of love, death and betrayal’ Simon Sebag Montefiore
‘Owen Matthews has written of the ghosts of his own family . . . His parents’ love for each other, kept alight across the Iron Curtain, makes an extraordinary story. This wonderful memoir brings to life the human victims of a terrifyingly inhuman system’ Antony Beevor,
Sunday Telegraph
Books of the Year
‘One of the most fascinating family memoirs of recent times. Few people could write as Owen Matthews does about his parents’ tormented love life and his maternal grandparents’ horrific fate with such a blend of affection and critical but unobtrusive objectivity’
Literary Review
‘At its most touching, it is a love letter from a child to a mother – beautifully written and intensely moving . . .
Stalin’s Children
realises compellingly the dramatic and emotional potential of its material . . . it steers an impressive course between romance and disillusionment’
Daily Telegraph
‘An extraordinary story . . . There are many moments of almost unbearable poignancy’
Independent
‘Gripping family history . . . This fascinating book is not a footnote to Soviet history: it
is
Soviet history, one of the millions of private tales of evil and astonishing endurance that make up the awful whole’
Observer
‘In
Stalin’s Children
[Matthews] has written a superb chronicle of the 20th-century Soviet Union, seen through the eyes of his parents and grandparents: a Russian
Wild Swans
. . . Some of the stories will stay with me forever’
Sunday Times
‘Remarkable . . . not only does Owen Matthews write with extraordinary vividness . . . but his technique is more that of a novelist than a journalist – and a master craftsman at that . . .
Stalin’s Children
, when translated, should enter the canon of Russian literature’
Spectator
‘The letters, papers and confidences Matthews inhabits in
Stalin’s Children
rehabilitate all the generations they touch – including his own – showing how their times shaped their choices’
New York Times
‘Terror, stagnation, exile, hope and disillusion are the fabric of Russian history in the last century. These are also the backdrop for Owen Matthews’s poignant history . . . Few books say so much about Russia then and now, and its effect on those it touches’
Economist
‘In a narrative that moves seamlessly back and forth through history . . . [Matthews] offers a poignant and insightful reading experience, leaving one with a keener sense of the unseen forces that drive present-day Russia’
New York Post
‘Remarkable . . . What makes this story striking is the family’s love, bravery and occasionally their simple good fortune . . . Thoughtful, unflinching’
Financial Times
‘Epic . . . extraordinary . . . Some of Matthews’s most vivid pages evoke the children’s inconceivably brutal experience during the war, though he is brilliant, too, on what it was like to be one of Stalin’s children. [Matthews] seems to contain an essence of a Russia that preceded the turmoils and savage inflictions that he so richly describes in his book’ Simon Callow,
Guardian
‘Part memoir, part family history, and part meditation on Russia’s extraordinary capacity for tragedy and metamorphosis,
Stalin’s Children
combines emotion and drama worthy of a novel with the cool gaze of a reporter . . . [It is] impossible not to be moved’
Times Literary Supplement
‘A moving book written with a tender yet unsentimental eye, a deeply intimate account that reveals through the lives of Matthews’ own family how the Soviet experience shaped, and destroyed, millions of people’
Seattle Times
‘Matthews details the plight of three generations of his family in brilliant, tireless detail. There’s romance, drama, life and death and personal discovery. And in a memoir, who could ask for more?’
Sunday Times
Books of the Year
First published in Great Britain 2008
Copyright © Owen Matthews 2008
This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Owen Matthews to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 8027 7762 1
www.bloomsbury.com/owenmatthews
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