LIVE NOT BY LIES

Political machinations impact the lives of two very different families in this historical novel by Coffey.

Zoya Zarubina and Irina Anokhin first meet when they are 5 years old in Harbin, China. Both girls live in the same building—Zoya, the daughter of a diplomat, lives on the top floor, and Irina, whose father is a doorman, lives in the basement. Zoya describes how she grew up around Soviet NKVD (secret police officers), as her father’s job was to usher Russians back home who had fled to China during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1920. Irina’s father, Boris, cannot return to Russia, as he was a White Army colonel who executed Red Army prisoners. Zoya’s father leaves, and her new stepfather, Leonid Eitingon, is later revealed to be the Soviet intelligence officer tasked with Leon Trotsky’s assassination. Meanwhile, Boris is arrested and forced by the secret service to work in Istanbul as a doorman and a spy. The Anokhin family is divided, and Irina and her mother are sent to a gulag. Zoya goes on to become a translator, working on American atomic bomb secrets for Russia, and, in later life, she begins interviewing the aging Leonid to understand the horror the regime brought to families such as the Anokhins. Coffey demonstrates an enviable understanding of Russian history, skillfully intertwining the lives of real-life and fictional characters. Lengthy passages in which Leonid recalls his role in Trotsky’s assassination dominate the novel, punctuated with chillingly evocative description: “We shot most of them at once – a bloody night; the executioners’ hands must have ached from pulling triggers.” The author perhaps shows a slight bias toward Zoya and Leonid, leaving the character development of the Anokhin family on the back burner. Still, this is an engrossingly complex novel that breathes life into 20th-century Russian history and provocatively fills in unknown details by melding fiction and fact.

A complicated yet well-managed novel that will captivate readers fascinated by this era.