Two Babushkas

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.

'Her book is truly exceptional, and deserves a prize' Independent 'I loved this saga of two fascinating Russian-Jewish women making ends meet, making love, making homes, making agonizing compromises in the most terrible times of the twentieth century and 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 'It's a thoughtful, thought-provoking book with an excellent sense of time and place' Choice 'The book is held together by the twin themes of compromise and survival' Virginia Rounding, Guardian