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Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia
Orlando
Figes (Allen Lane)
Vast in scale and woven through with extraordinary stories
and characters, Natasha’s Dance ranges from
the splendour of eighteenth century St Petersburg to the
power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic
rituals of Asiatic shamans, from the poetry of Pushkin to
the music of Musorgsky and the films of Eisenstein, bringing
to life an extraordinary cast of serf artists and aristocrats,
revolutionaries and exiles, priests and libertines.
Beautifully written and gloriously vivid, Natasha's
Dance is a triumphant assertion of the greatness of
Russia's culture and the remarkable lives of those who
have shaped it.
Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College,
University of London. He was born in London in 1959 and studied
History at Cambridge. Before moving to Birkbeck he was a
University Lecturer in History and Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge. He is the author, amongst others, of A People’s
Tragedy which in 1997 was the winner of the Wolfson
History Prize, the WH Smith Literary Award, the Longman/History
Today Book of the Year Award, the NCR Book Award and
the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
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