Dimensions
162 x 240 x 33mm
'The great storyteller of modern Russian historians' -Financial Times
Just Send Me Word is the extraordinary love story of two Muscovites, Lev and Svetlana. Kept apart for fourteen years by the Second World War and the Gulag, they stayed true to each other and left behind them an astonishing monument to their love: a remarkable cache of 1,500 letters exchanged between them as Lev battled to survive in one of Stalin's most notorious labour camps.
Smuggled in and out of the camp by workers and officials, these uncensored, beautifully written letters have a shocking immediacy, and allow us into the interior world of two people. Svetlana's letters are a testament to constancy and hope, even in the grey world of post-War Moscow. Lev's, composed with care and tenderness, are torn between a wish to reassure Svetlana, and the desire to create an enduring record of the terrible conditions into which he had been thrown. Each one of these writings could have been his last.
Orlando Figes tells Svetlana and Lev's story with remarkable insight and warmth, brilliantly reconstructing the broader world in which their narrative unfolded.
