(Moura, the Baroness Budberg, hailed from the Russian aristocracy and lived in the lap of luxury, until the Bolshevik Revolution forced her to live by her wits. Thereafter, her existence was a story of connivance and stratagem; a succession of unlikely twists and turns. Intimately involved in the mysterious Lockhart affair, a conspiracy which almost brought down the fledgling Soviet state, mistress to Maxim Gorky and then to H. G. Wells, Moura was a woman of enormous energy, intelligence, and charm whose deepest commitment was undoubtedly the mythologization of her own life.

Before Nina Berberova left Russia for a life of exile and became one of the great novelists of the 20th century, she lived in the Gorky household with Moura. In this legendary biography translated into English for the first time, Berberova paints a portrait of the ultimate survivor, a woman who made her life a triumph of fiction. Features eight pages of black-and-white photos.

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