As heard on Radio 4 Book of the Week
Lina Prokofiev was alone in her Moscow apartment one night when the telephone rang. The caller insisted that she come downstairs to collect a parcel, but when she reached the courtyard she was arrested for treason.
First enraptured by the young pianist and rising star, Serge Prokofiev, during a courtship in Brooklyn, then abandoned by him in Moscow, Lina survived one of the darkest periods in Soviet history enduring eight years in the Gulag after she received that fateful telephone call.
Unfolding with the intrigue of a spy novel,The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofievtraces the largely untold story of a remarkable woman who gave up her career, her country and her freedom for the brilliant man she married.
Simon Morrison is Professor of Music History at Princeton, where he earned his PhD in musicology. He is the author ofThe Peoples Artist, a definitive account of Prokofievs career after his fateful return to the Soviet Union in 1936, along with numerous articles and essays in leading scholarly journals, and features for theNew York Times. Morrison was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.
The dramatic untold story of Lina and Serge Prokofiev: a tale of a doomed love and a shattering portrait of an artist>
