Based on a true historical episode, The Stalin Epigram is a
fictional account of the life of Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the greatest
Russian poet of the twentieth century--and one of the few artists in
Soviet Russia who daringly refused to pay creative homage to Joseph
Stalin. The poet's defiance of the Kremlin dictator and the Bolshevik
regime-- particularly his outspoken criticism of Stalin's
collectivization rampage that drove millions of Russian peasants to
starvation--reached its climax in 1934 when Mandelstam, putting his life
on the line, composed a searing indictment of Stalin in a sixteen-line
epigram and secretly recited it to a handful of friends and fellow
artists.
Would Stalin and his merciless state security apparatus get wind of this
brazenly insulting poem? Would the poet's body and spirit be crushed
under the weight of the state if they did?
Narrated in turn by Mandelstam himself, his devoted wife, his great
friends Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, and vivid fictional
characters, The Stalin Epigram is a page-turning tale of courage and
the human spirit and illuminates the agonizing choices Russian
intellectuals faced during the Stalinist terror. In it, legendary author
Robert Littell delivers his most riveting suspense story and masterfully
written novel to date.
