The Tattered Cloak and Other Stories

The greatest collection by one of the great Russian writers is now back in print. First published in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, these searing, evocative stories by the late emigre writer Nina Berberova (1901-1993) are portraits of the lives of Russian exiles in Paris on the eve of World War II. The protagonists range from housekeepers and waiters to shabby-genteel aristocrats and intellectualsbut all are united in a haunting displacement from their pasts, and all share a troubling uncertainty about the future.

Nina Berberova's life spanned the entire 20th century from her birth in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1901 to her death in Philadelphia in 1993. She left Russia in 1922, living in various places before finally settling in 1925 in Paris, where she wrote prolifically for the emigre press. She came to the United States in 1951. Her work was first introduced to non-Russian readers in French translation and she was named a Chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Letters. Among her books are The Ladies from St. Petersburg, The Book of Happiness, and Cape of Storms