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From Amazon
Winner of the Heineman Prize and the Governor General's Award for nonfiction, Michael Ignatieff's The Russian Album is a sumptuous exploration of four generations of the aristocratic Ignatieff family. In particular, Ignatieff focuses on the lives of his paternal grandparents, Princess Natasha Mestchersky and Count Paul Ignatieff, minister of education under Nicholas II, who resigned his post on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution and was saved from the ensuing bloodshed by his students.
The Russian Album is at once a rich and loving personal history of an extraordinary family and a chronicle of that family's connection with the history of imperial Russia. It details the life of the Ignatieffs in Czarist Russia as well as their escape after the Russian Revolution in 1917, their sojourn in London and Paris and their eventual journey to Canada. Ignatieff uses family photographs and excerpts from diaries and letters to give readers a taste of the life that his ancestors lived, but The Russian Album isn't a celebration of Czarist Russia as much as an exploration of the strength of family ties, and one of the most touching moments of the book focuses on Ignatieff's conversation with his grandfather's remaining sons about their father and their memories of him. In the final reckoning, it is Ignatieff's attention to the Ignatieff past, rather than his own present, that makes the book such a powerful reading experience. --Jeffrey Canton --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
As minister of education, Count Paul Ignatieff, the author's grandfather, resigned out of disgust from Czar Nicholas II's cabinet. A liberal, he tried to preserve statesmanlike traditions, but an increasingly reactionary regime stifled him. With the 1917 revolution he went into exile. While his wife Natasha cared for their five sons in England, then in Canada, the count immersed himself in White Russian emigre politics in Paris. The couple's reunion is one of the touching moments in this family history. The author, an expatriate Canadian living in London, combed family memoirs and made two trips to the Soviet Union to track down material on four generations of his aristocratic ancestors. He is not proud of his great-grandfather Nikolai, an imperial ambassador who persecuted Jews and plotted against the Ottoman Empire, yet he hides nothing. His painfully honest search for roots leads him to the realization, "You make yourself with your own hands, here and now." (August
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Asks and Answers Deep Questions About Family and History,
By Louise Steinman (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Russian Album (Paperback)
RUSSIAN ALBUM is a memorable read, a painstakingly honest search for the meaning of one's antecedents. Ignatieff paints a complex picture of Imperial Russia and its demise, through the firsthand accounts of members of his family. He honors their memory and their efforts to pass on that memory. I recommend this highly.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Family History of a Canadian Leader of the Opposition,
By
This review is from: The Russian Album (Paperback)
Well known as an brilliant articulate, academic, Michael Ignatieff was recently parachuted into Canadian Politics and quite quickly into the position of Liberal Leader of the Opposition. As he had been out of Canada for several decades, this elegant, honest and poignant family history (impressive in some quarters) provides some much needed backgroud for those Canadians who are still wondering who he is.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Le meilleur livre que j'ai lu en 2009,
This review is from: The Russian Album (Paperback)
J'ai passe un vol de 5 heures de Mexico a Montreal captive par ce livre. L'histoire de les deux branches de la famille Ignatieff et son evolution est un chef d'oeuvre d'apres moi. Je le recommande a tout le monde.
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