A hundred years ago, Teffi (the nom de plume of Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya) was one of Russia’s most popular and admired writers. The breadth of her talent – Symbolist poems, satirical sketches, feuilletons, stories and even songs – was equalled only by that of her audience: as her biographer Edythe Haber explains in the introduction to this beautiful new edition of what has remained Teffi’s most famous work, she was famously read by “both Russias”, from Nikolai II to Vladimir Lenin.Although born into a “distinguished” St Petersburg family, like many Russian intellectuals Teffi had been a supporter of the 1905 …read more
Source: The National
