The Story of Lina and Serge Prokofiev

The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev

The dramatic untold story of Lina and Serge Prokofiev: a tale of a doomed love and a shattering portrait of an artist

Unforgettable as a testimony of personal devotion

Morrison tells a good story, without excess or indulgence, and with touching empathy for his heroine

Immensely readable and entertaining

Morrison writes excellently... As much a story of personal tragedy and disappointment as it is a compelling study of how art and tyranny interact

Morrison, who had access to the family and significant archival collections, has produced a gripping story of a young woman’s rise into the highest social and musical circles, her marriage to Prokofiev (whose principal affection was for his music, not his family), and their globe-trotting tours and swelling celebrity. But as the Stalin-led Soviet Union commenced its multiple atrocities and outrages, the Prokofievs’ world shrank, their travels were limited and their futures were tightly circumscribed. Research, compassion and outrage combine in a story both riveting and wrenching.

In the hagiographic hall of fame that is the Russian artist’s wife — Sophia Tolstoy, Anna Dostoevsky, Nadezhda Mandelstam, all muses who stood watch while their men created things of genius, and then who jealously guarded the legacy — Lina Prokofiev is odd woman out. Her story almost cannot be believed, until Simon Morrison gained access to the documents (and the family’s trust) in order to tell it. Biography does not get more important than this.

Simon Morrison is Professor of Music History at Princeton, where he earned his PhD in musicology. He is the author of The People’s Artist, a definitive account of Prokofiev’s career after his fateful return to the Soviet Union in 1936, along with numerous articles and essays in leading scholarly journals, and features for the New York Times. Morrison was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.

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 Prokofiev traces 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

A marvellous book ... It takes huge imaginative vision and a deep on-the-ground knowledge of Moscow, acquired over many years, to grasp the full dynamism of the city’s history. But Simon A Morrison has pulled it off. His ambitious, erudite account is vivid and compelling, a wonderful conjuring up of Russia’s great capital in all its beauty, fire and fury

Helen Rappaport, author of The Rebel Romanov

[A] sweeping, judicious and elegant history of Moscow from the origins of the city to the present day … Morrison is brilliant in chronicling, rhapsodizing and dissolving Moscow all at once

[A] monumental, sweeping book … as much a history of Russia over the past millennium as a portrait of a city

[A Kingdom and a Village] abounds in details that will surprise even the cultural insider… a brave undertaking amid the ongoing war and the shifting boundaries of Russian studies

An engaging book … [Morrison] works hard and successfully lifts scenes off the page … The prose is a model of clarity

The erudition of A Kingdom and a Village .... is matched only by its readability

Vivid and engaging … Morrison … brings [Moscow’s] streets to life

Russia is more than just Moscow, but it has long been its beating heart – at once bloody and life-giving – and this book captures its progress from insignificant hamlet to modern megalopolis magnificently. Every page pulses with individuals' stories or historical insights, making this a wonderful biography of a city, its rulers and people

Mark Galeotti, author of A Short History of Russia

A preeminent historian of Russian history and culture, Simon Morrison is the perfect biographer of Moscow, one of the world’s most fascinating and enigmatic cities

A magisterial account of Moscow … gripping and enlightening … At a time when Russia is once again trying to remake the borders of Europe and the nature of politics in the world, Simon Morrison gives us a new way to understand this vast and ever-changing country through its singularly compelling capital city

A sweeping history of Moscow that combines taut storytelling with penetrating analysis … Simon Morrison brings to life the contradictory legacies of power, violence and creativity that have shaped the city as a nexus of empire. A timely and indispensable guide for anyone wanting to understand Moscow

Rebecca Reich, Professor of Russian Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge

A gem of a book … With vivid writing and an astonishing body of research, Simon Morrison creates a mesmerizing tale of how Moscow came to be’

Morrison’s riveting biography of Moscow is breathtaking in its span – covering architecture, music, society, institutions, leaders’ decisions and the ordinary people’s response, and much more. It is also a beautifully written story of Morrison’s personal relationship with Russia that began in 1990 when he visited Moscow for the first time

Nina Khrushcheva, co-author of In Putin's Footsteps

A winning account [and] revealing portrait of a city that has made and been made by an always difficult history

A Kingdom and a Village is not just a fine work of history; it is a vivid demonstration of Simon Morrison’s skills as a storyteller. For those who already know Moscow inside and out or are learning about the city’s past for the first time, this book turns ten centuries of history into ten days of highly enjoyable reading

Eliot Borenstein, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, NYU

A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow

An erudite and entertaining history of Moscow, a city whose rich past offers crucial insight into contemporary global politics 
 
Moscow stands at the centre of a nation comprising eleven percent of the globe’s landmass, eleven time zones, and nearly one hundred and fifty million people, some thirteen million of whom live in the capital. In A Kingdom and a Village, acclaimed historian Simon Morrison offers a vividly rendered history of Russia’s heart and soul, tracing its transformation from a ‘big village’ – the demeaning nickname the St. Petersburg nobility gave to its provincial neighbour – into a spectacular metropolis of vast geopolitical import. 
 
That arc is the stuff of dramatic, violent, stranger-than-fiction historical narrative: the last century alone has featured invasions and costly battles, the destruction (and reconstruction) of sacred cultural and religious landmarks, and the collapse of the Soviet republic – not to mention the rise of an authoritarian leader who is a keen student of Russian history. Morrison reaches back to the city’s founding as a fortress on a river nearly a millennium ago. In the centuries that followed, any number of external forces – from Tatar Mongols and Swedes to Napoleon and Hitler – set their sights on Moscow, bolstering its self-conception as both a glittering prize and a site of perpetual defence and resurrection. 
 
Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, Morrison shows us that to understand Moscow is not only to unlock the spellbinding mysteries of Russia’s past, but also to grasp the grim logic of its present. 
 
A Kingdom and a Village is a magisterial biography of a place – and an essential guide to a people and a nation.

Simon Morrison

Praise for A Kingdom and a Village

A marvellous book ... It takes huge imaginative vision and a deep on-the-ground knowledge of Moscow, acquired over many years, to grasp the full dynamism of the city’s history. But Simon A Morrison has pulled it off ...

[A] sweeping, judicious and elegant history of Moscow from the origins of the city to the present day … Morrison is brilliant in chronicling, rhapsodizing and dissolving Moscow all at once

[A] monumental, sweeping book … as much a history of Russia over the past millennium as a portrait of a city

A marvellous book ... It takes huge imaginative vision and a deep on-the-ground knowledge of Moscow, acquired over many years, to grasp the full dynamism of the city’s history. But Simon A Morrison has pulled it off ...

[A] sweeping, judicious and elegant history of Moscow from the origins of the city to the present day … Morrison is brilliant in chronicling, rhapsodizing and dissolving Moscow all at once

[A] monumental, sweeping book … as much a history of Russia over the past millennium as a portrait of a city

A marvellous book ... It takes huge imaginative vision and a deep on-the-ground knowledge of Moscow, acquired over many years, to grasp the full dynamism of the city’s history. But Simon A Morrison has pulled it off ...

[A] sweeping, judicious and elegant history of Moscow from the origins of the city to the present day … Morrison is brilliant in chronicling, rhapsodizing and dissolving Moscow all at once

[A] monumental, sweeping book … as much a history of Russia over the past millennium as a portrait of a city

Books by Simon Morrison

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