On a crisp September morning, trouble comes to the Gorbatovs' farm. Having fled revolution and civil war in Russia, the family has worked tirelessly to establish themselves as crop farmers in Provence, their hopes of returning home a distant dream. While young Ilya Stepanovich is committed to this new way of life, his step-brother Vasya looks only to the past. With the arrival of a letter from Paris, a plot to lure Vasya back to Russia begins in earnest, and Ilya must set out for the capital to try to preserve his family's fragile stability. The first novel by the celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova, The Last and the First is an elegant and devastating portrayal of the internal struggles of a generation of emigres. Appearing for the first time in English in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Marian Schwartz, it shows Berberova in full command of her gifts as a writer of masterful poise and psychological insight.

About the Author
Nina Berberova (1901-1993) was a Russian-born writer. Raised in St Petersburg, she left Russia in 1922 and lived in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Italy before settling in Paris in 1925. There she published widely in the emigre press, and wrote the stories and novels for which she is now known. Berberova emigrated to the United States in 1950 and eventually took up academic posts at Yale and then Princeton. In France she was honoured as a chevalier of l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Reviews
"[Berberova's] psychological portraits, dialogue, and prose are intensely elegant, even luminous. She seemed to have an otherworldly sense of what to say outright and what to leave implicit in her work." -- Kirkus Reviews

"[A] unique, harmonious, and brilliant book. Her language is uncommonly strong and pure; her images are magnificent for their solid and precise power... this is literature of the highest quality, the work of a genuine writer." -- Vladimir Nabokov

"Haunting... as graceful and subtle as Chekhov." -- Anne Tyler, New Republic

"Like Turgenev and Chekhov, of whom she is the rightful heir, Berberova... is uncannily shrewd about romance, about its bright promise, without making her characters' real satisfaction seem trite." -- New York Review of Books

"...an elegant tale of emigration, patriotism and destitution'... 'With echoes of Tolstoy and and Chekhov, the novel is at once soberly realistic and richly symbolic." --Bryan Karetnyk, The Financial Times Life & Arts



Book Information
ISBN 9781782276975
Author Nina Berberova
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Pushkin Press
Publisher Pushkin Press