Stalin's Barber

Paul M. Levitt is professor of English at the University of Colorado and the author of several novels, plays, and works of literary criticism. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Stalin's Barber is all that the great historical novels used to be—epic in scope, with powerful characterizations, visceral action, and a blazingly intelligent authorial point of view. Here we meet—and know—the chief players in the extraordinary centrifuge that was Stalin's Soviet Union. The culture is revealed and flayed; the lives are displayed and understood—this is ‘grand’ writing, in the sense of ‘grand’ opera, from a man who is already a master playwright, and now deserves to be a world figure.

• AcknowledgmentsPart IChapter 1: ExileChapter 2: Making the Family Skeletons DanceChapter 3: Purging the PartyChapter 4: The LetterChapter 5: Iosif Vissarionovich DzhugashviliChapter 6: To Mosocw, to Moscow, to Moscow!Chapter 7: In Voronezh, a City Peter Built and Poets BravedChapter 8: In the Most High and Palmy State of RomeChapter 9: That Way Madness LiesChapter 10: Only the PitilessChapter 11: StatisticsPart IIChapter 12: Pavel’s Polish PelagiaChapter 13: Escape from ParadiseChapter 14: The Haughty BarberChapter 15: Anna on the BubbleChapter 16: The Worst Cut of AllChapter 17: To the Finland StationRazan’s ListAnna’s NotesGlossary