Hope Against Hope recounted the last four years in the life of the great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, and gave a hair-raising account of Stalin's terror. Hope Abandoned complements that earlier masterpiece, and in it Nadezhda Mandelstam describes their life together from 1919, and her own after Mandelstam's death in a labour camp in 1938. She also sets out his system of values and beliefs, and provides striking portraits of many of their contemporaries including Boris Pasternak and their champion till his own downfall, Nikolai Bukharin, as well as an astonishingly candid picture of Anna Akhmatova.
Max Hayward Books
Max Hayward was a significant figure in Russian literature, known for his work as a lecturer and translator. His translations offered readers profound insights into the Russian psyche, masterfully conveying its complexities across linguistic boundaries. Through his efforts, Hayward played a crucial role in making the rich tradition of Russian literature accessible to a wider audience, fostering a deeper appreciation for its depth and nuance.





On they went singing 'Eternal Memory', and whenever they stopped, the sound of their feet, the horses and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing ...Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles with the new order and confronts the changes cruel experience has made in him and the anguish of being torn between the love of two women.
Involuntary Journey To Siberia
- 282 pages
- 10 hours of reading
Collection includes conversations with Willard Trask, John Hollander, Herbert Mason, Ben Belitt, Richard Wilbur, Robert Fitzgerald, Max Hayward, Edmund Keeley, Octavio Paz, Michael Hamberger, Christopher Middleton. Twelve distinguished translators share their thoughts on the art and practice of literary translation in this lively series of interviews. Although the common subject is the translation of poetry, the conversations range across a field of related topics: how each person got started as a translator, how each goes about the work, the qualities that distinguish a great translation from a merely serviceable one, the theoretic issues posed by poetic translation, the barriers of culture and time, the practical details of rendering a poem from one language to the next. --University of Massachusetts Press.
Russia's Other Writers
- 216 pages
- 8 hours of reading
English, Russian (translation)