The Wives: The Women Behind Russia’s Literary Giants (Pegasus Books)
The women behind the greatest works of Russian literature: Anna Dostoevsky, Sophia Tolstoy, Véra Nabokov, Elena Bulgakov, Nadezhda Mandelstam, and Natalya Solzhenitsyn were their husbands’ muses, intellectual companions, and indispensable advisers. These marriages were marked by intense collaboration: the women contributed ideas and committed to paper great works as stenographers, typists, editors, researchers, translators, and publishers. To use Vladimir Nabokov’s words, they formed a "single shadow" with the writers. Born in Moscow, began her career writing for Russian national newspapers and magazines. As a 1991 Alfred Friendly Press Fellow, she published articles in The Philadelphia Inquirer and its Sunday magazine. She has also contributed to The Huffington Post and The Boston Globe. After coming to Canada in 1992, Popoff obtained post-graduate degrees in Russian and English literature from the University of Toronto and the University of Saskatchewan. She taught at the University of Saskatchewan before turning to literary biography. Popoff’s first book, Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography (Free Press, 2010), received two awards at the Saskatchewan Book Awards that year. Her new book of non-fiction, The Wives, tells the stories of Russia’s most celebrated literary couples.See:
As Leo Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstoy experienced both glory and condemnation during their forty-eight-year marriage. She was admired as the muse and literary assistant to one of the wor...
