NEW STATESMAN & EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017' Brilliant a staggering story' Robert Fox Evening Standard Books of the Year' Fascinating vast & rich a dramatic family memoir' Guardian Uncovering his family's remarkable & moving stories Mark Mazower recounts the sacrifices & silences that marked a generation & their descendants It was a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad the Vilna ghetto occupied Paris & even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht His British father was the lucky one the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war & revolution Max the grandfather had started out as a socialist & manned the barricades against tsarist troops but never spoke of it His wife Frouma came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making their way in Soviet society In the centenary of the Russian Revolution What You Did Not Tell recounts a brand of socialism erased from memory
- humanistic impassioned & broad-ranging in its sympathies But it also explores the unexpected happiness that may await history's losers the power of friendship & the love of place that allowed Max & Frouma's son to call England home