Recommendations from our site
“I still think it’s one of the most beautiful memoirs ever written. Although it’s not about the Russian revolution as such, it is permeated with a sense of loss and exile, as are all of Nabokov’s books. He evokes gorgeous countryside scenes of pre-revolutionary Russia, but at the same time has some distance from it – he recognises the awfulness of what he at one point calls his “rather appalling country” at the same time.” Read more...
The best books on Memoirs of Communism
Anne Applebaum, Historian
“I love it for several reasons. First, it made me feel that it is possible to give written form to nostalgia. The lyrical affirmation of that was quite important to me. Secondly, his preoccupation with language. I kept looking for books which talk about language, and at the end of the book Nabokov has a dedication to the Russian language, or an invocation of it and his incredibly poignant loss of it.” Read more...
Eva Hoffman recommends the best Memoirs
Eva Hoffman, Memoirist
Our most recommended books
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Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov -
Growing Up
by Russell Baker -
Blessings in Disguise
by Alec Guinness -
High Cotton
by Darryl Pinckney -
A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha
by Rodrigo Garcia -
Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison
by Ahmed Naji, translated by Katharine Halls