Margaret Zarudny Freeman

Russia and Beyond: One Family's Journey, 1908 - 1935 Margaret Zarudny Freeman

Russia and Beyond is a young woman's account of herself and her family in the chaotic years surrounding the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917-20, followed by a long self-exile in Russo-Chinese Manchuria, and the beginnings of a new life in America in the 1930s. A child's-eye view of violent military events, and of unflinchingly practical responses to personal emergency and loss - with five siblings in tow after the death of their politically victimized mother - matures to an understanding of homeland loyalty, displacement, and expatriation, in a more international arena. The author, now aged 97, has left us an inspiring, sometimes chilling, but forever positive narrative of this harsh intellectual coming of age, and of the mutual love and perseverance that sustained her, and her young fellow survivors. A comment from Nadine Gordimer (Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1991): "Dear Margaret, I've read your book with growing interest and fascination, page after page. It's a remarkable evocation, a double one: a revelation of the profound meaning of emigration not written before, and a picture of family relationships enduring the disruptions of historico-political disasters in what must be no less than a unique survival by trust and love." Johannesburg, South Africa 10 August 2005