In Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi (New York Review Books), translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg, the Russian writer popularly known as Teffi tells how she was persuaded by an impresario (who uses the pseudonym of Gooskin) to take a break from her increasingly desperate and dangerous life in Moscow during the Russian Civil War, and embark on a reading tour to Ukraine. Gooskin deals with the red tape and the crankily dangerous bureaucrats, while Teffi and her companions rush from poetry readings to operettas to crowded cafés, simply to be in the presence of other people. Teffi’s name is recognized wherever she goes, even in a tiny shtetl on the border with Ukraine, and the group is constantly in danger of missing their next travel connection because Teffi’s fans insist that she give readings of her work. In Kiev, Teffi joins with others who hope to launch newspapers and open theatres, and it is only months later, with the Bolsheviks on the verge of entering Kiev, that Teffi and many of her colleagues flee to Odessa. From Odessa she manages to get a place on a rickety ship which takes her to Novorossiysk, where she is invited to a performance of her works for an audience of the tsarist elite. This performance turns out to be her “last bow to a Russian audience on Russian soil.” Teffi eventually made her way to Paris, where she continued to write poems, plays and satirical essays for the rest of her life. In Memories, Teffi is simply one of the many who were forced by circumstances to leave their normal lives behind, and her observations about her fellow wanderers and their wild resourcefulness are recorded with humour and compassion. In the introduction (by Edythe Haber), humourist Arkady Bukhov is quoted as remarking that “in general Teffi writes so cleverly and beautifully that even her enemies would not call her a woman writer.” One of the many good reasons to read this book.

—Patty Osborne