Stalin's Meteorologist

Zusatztext

<p><i>Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2018</i></p><p><b>The heartbreaking story of an innocent man in a Soviet gulag, told for the first time in English, and beautifully illustrated with the original drawings he sent to his family from the camp.</b></p><p>One fateful day in 1934, a husband arranged to meet his wife under the colonnade of the Bolshoi theatre. As she waited for him in vain, he was only a few hundred metres away, in a cell in the notorious Lubyanka prison.</p><p>Less than a year before, Alexey Wangenheim a celebrated meteorologist had been hailed by Stalin as a national hero. But following his sudden arrest, he was exiled to a gulag, forced to spend his remaining years on an island in the frozen north, along with thousands of other political prisoners.</p><p>By chance, Olivier Rolin discovered an album of the letters and beautiful drawings of the natural world which Alexey sent home to his wife, Varvara, and his four-year-old daughter, Eleonora. Intrigued by these images, Rolin became determined to uncover Alexeys story and his eventual horrifying fate.</p><p><i>Stalins Meteorologist</i>is the fascinating and deeply moving account of an innocent man and his family caught up in the brutality of Soviet paranoia, and a timely reminder of the human consequences of political extremism.</p>

Autorenportrait

<b>Olivier Rolin</b>was born in Paris, and is a critically acclaimed author and freelance writer. His books have won many prizes, including the Prix du Style<i></i>for<i>Stalins Meteorologist</i>in 2014.He first visited Russia, then the USSR, in 1986. Since then, he has returned many times and has travelled widely throughout the country.

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