Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780062206107)

Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography

PEN Literary Award Finalist

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

New York Times Notable Book

Washington Post Notable Book

Boston Globe Best Book of the Year

The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators--her father, Josef Stalin.

Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy--the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.

As she gradually learned about the extent of her father's brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States--leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father's regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin.

With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana's daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana's incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it's a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father's name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.

Illustrated with photographs.

Author: Rosemary Sullivan
ISBN-10: 0062206109
ISBN-13: 9780062206107
Publisher: Harper
Language: English
Published: 06/02/2015
Pages: 768
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.90d
Award: Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction - Winner
Award: RBC Taylor Prize - Finalist
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist
Award: ALA Notable Books - Winner
Award: Literary Award - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2015
Publishers Weekly 04/06/2015
Library Journal 04/15/2015 pg. 94
Booklist 05/01/2015 pg. 73
Quill & Quire 06/01/2015 pg. 29
New York Times Book Review 06/14/2015 pg. 9
Shelf Awareness 06/19/2015
New York Times Book Review 06/21/2015 pg. 22
New York Review of Books 11/19/2015 pg. 60
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/06/2015 pg. 28
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2015 pg. 42