Based on a riveting historical episode, The Stalin Epigram is a fictional rendering of the life of Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century -- and one of the few artists in Soviet Russia who daringly refused to pay creative homage to Joseph Stalin. The poet's defiance of the Kremlin dictator and the Bolshevik regime -- particularly his outspoken criticism of Stalin's collectivization rampage that drove millions of Russian peasants to starvation -- reached its climax in 1934 when Mandelstam, putting his life on the line, composed a searing indictment of Stalin in a sixteen-line epigram and secretly recited it to a handful of friends and fellow artists. Would Stalin and his merciless state security apparatus get wind of this brazenly insulting poem? Would the poet's body and spirit be crushed under the weight of the state if they did? Narrated in turn by Mandelstam himself, his devoted wife, his great friends the poets Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, along with vivid fictional characters, The Stalin Epigram is the page-turning tale of courage and the human spirit told in deftly poetic prose by a perceptive, talented writer. With the benefit of extraordinary research and an almost mystical empathy, bestselling author Robert Littell has drawn a fictional portrait of the beleaguered poet struggling to survive the running riot of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s. This memorable novel culminates in a wholly unexpected encounter that illuminates the agonizing choices Russian intellectuals faced during the Stalinist terror and explains what drew Robert Littell to the poignant subject in the first place. Critics agree that The Stalin Epigram is a powerful novel. Littell, who met with Osip’s wife in 1979 and recorded the story of his imprisonment and death, tells a harrowing, almost absurdist tale of imprisonment, exile, and death in the Soviet state. Turning from his Soviet spy thrillers, Littell provides an impeccably researched historical backdrop, and his multiple perspectives offer a full picture of the era’s emotional and physical horrors. The strength of the book lies in Littell’s command of the brutalities of Stalin’s regime. Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC Russian poet Osip Mandelstam once said Russia is “a country where poetry is respected—people are killed for reading it, for writing it.” Sadly, he was correct. He died in a Siberian gulag in 1938, one of millions of victims of Stalin’s terror. Littell, best known for espionage novels (The Company, 2002), turns to historical fiction by telling Mandelstam’s story through the eyes of the poet’s wife, Nadezhda, and various others, including writers Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova. Littell begins the story in 1934; Mandelstam is famous but impoverished because publishers are now afraid to release his work. His only powerful patron, Bukharin, has been banished from Stalin’s inner circle. He assumes his arrest is imminent, and he writes “The Stalin Epigram,” a 16-line poetic attack on the dictator’s brutalities. There is an awful beauty to Mandelstam’s story as Littell tells it. The characters are trapped in a country gone mad, yet they strive to maintain their humanity. Historically accurate and filled with period detail, this is both a tragic and life-affirming novel. --Thomas Gaughan Bestselling author Robert Littell has been ranked amongst John Le Carre and Graham Greene for his masterful spy fiction. A Newsweek journalist in a previous incarnation, Littell has been writing about the Soviet Union and Russians since his first novel, the espionage classic The Defection of A.J.Lewinter . Among his numerous critically acclaimed novels are The October Circle, Mother Russia, The Debriefing, The Sisters, The Revolutionist, The Once and Future Spy, An Agent in Place, The Visiting Professor, the New York Times bestselling The Company (adapted for a TNT mini-series ), and Legends ( winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Best Thriller of 2005 ) and For the Future of Israel , a book of conversations with Shimon Peres . Littell is an American who makes his home in France. From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Patrick Anderson Robert Littell has been publishing fascinating, often surreal spy novels, including "The Defection of A.J. Lewinter," "The Sisters," "The Company" and "Legends," since 1973. Now, in his 70s, the former Newsweek correspondent has written what may be his finest novel, "The Stalin Epigram," which dramatizes the horrific events that followed after the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote a 16-line epigram that attacked the all-powerful Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. By 1934, when the novel begins, Stalin's farm collectivization policies were causing mass starvation, and a reign of terror had begun in Moscow, where the slightest criticism of the dictator could bring arrest, torture and death. As a young poet, Mandelstam had believed in the communis