After the Romanovs Russian exiles in Paris from the Belle époque through revolution and war

Noted historian Rappaport (The Romanov Sisters, 2014) presents a a thorough and extremely well-researched examination of the Russian experience in Paris before and after the Bolshevik uprising of 1917. Although most of the book focuses on the Russian aristocracy, who had been coming to Paris since the time of Peter the Great, Rappaport also details the lives of a number of artists, writers, musicians, and dancers that made Paris their home, like Marc Chagall, Igor Stravinsky, and the Ballet Russe. After the revolution, she notes, the refugees who left Russia were anti-Bolshevik but not necessarily promonarchist, and the aristocracy lost wealth and social standing. Some took jobs as taxi drivers, seamstresses, or in other low-paying work. Others used their talents to work in the fashion industry. Some artists continued to work, but many became destitute. Writer Ivan Bunin was under constant financial strain until money from his 1933 Nobel Prize "bought him immediate respite from debt." Overall, those interested in exploring a variety of unique perspectives on the Russian Revolution will find a wealth of information within these pages.

Historian Rappaport (The Race to Save the Romanovs) delivers a glossy portrait of Russian artists and nobles who flocked to Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawing on French tabloids and countesses' diaries, Rappaport details scandalous affairs, sumptuous parties, extravagant shopping trips, and "rollicking night out" at Maxim's restaurant, where a Russian grand duke once presented his mistress, a high-class prostitute, with a pearl necklace worth 20 million francs served on a plate of oysters. She also describes how Russian performers, composers, and artists shocked and "entranced" Parisian audiences with their avant-garde ballets, and how Russian writers and poets overwhelmed the cafes of Montparnasse, causing local police to worry that revolution might spread to France. After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Russian noblewomen found work as designers, seamstresses, and models in the fashion industry. ("The couture houses loved the willowy, fine-boned Russian women," Rappaport notes.) Meanwhile, Russian men found jobs as taxi drivers or factory workers and crowded Paris's Russian cabarets at night. Full of colorful anecdotes and sharp character sketches, this breezy account of life in exile entertains. (Mar.)

Following A Thousand Ships, which was short-listed for Britain's Women's Prize for Fiction and a best seller in the United States, Haynes's Pandora's Jar belongs to a growing number of titles that put the female characters of Greek mythology front and center as less passive or secondary than they've been regarded (25,000-copy hardcover and 30,000-copy paperback first printing)

The bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters returns with the story of the Russian aristocrats who made Paris their home after fleeing the Bolshevik coup. Early on, Rappaport, an expert on imperial Russian history, notes how "the Russian discovery of the French capital…goes back to the time of…Peter the Great, who made a visit to Paris in 1717 and fell in love with Versailles." This affinity for Paris reached its apex during the Belle Époque, when the excesses of Russian aristocrats became notorious around town. "The French press," writes the author, "regularly titillated readers with stories of the vices and eccentricities of the grand dukes." The events in Russia from 1905 onward caused increasing anxiety for the aristocracy and fear for safety of the extended Romanov family. At the same time, Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company was storming Paris with its shocking modernist music and dance, and other artists--e.g., poet Ilya Ehrenburg and painters Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine--were "electrified," as Ehrenburg put it, by the abundant culture of Paris. The author delineates the plight of both the Russian elite, who had to abandon their great wealth in land and palaces while pining for a restoration of the monarchy, and the truly impoverished immigrants who drove taxis, took up needlework in Chanel's fashion house--"twenty-seven fashion houses were established in Paris by Russian emigres between 1922 and 1935"--or toiled at dozens of other low-paying jobs. At the time, the new arrivals were often characterized as quarrelsome or prone to dissent. As in her previous histories, Rappaport drives her lively narrative with minibiographies of notable characters, including Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin and noted humorist Teffi. Many of these artists' lives were stunted well into the 1930s by enforced dispossession and poverty. Throughout, the author, a consummate historian, displays her deep research into the era, the city, and its denizens. A culturally vibrant account of Russians uprooted to Paris during a tumultuous time. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.