The popular playwright and comic writer describes her last months in Russia and Ukraine during the chaotic aftermath of the Revolution, as she leaves Moscow together with other theatre people to find work first in Kyiv and then in Odesa and other cities on the Black Sea before she is finally obliged to go into exile. Writing some ten years after the event, she gives us a very clear sense of the confusing reality of living through the collapse of the world you’ve lived in all your life, and the difficulty of persuading yourself that this is really happening and won’t all magically be put right tomorrow.

Without ever being unnecessarily sentimental, the book is also an eloquent farewell to the pre-war arts scene in Moscow and Petersburg, and a memorial to all the many friends she lost during the Revolution and Civil War. ( )

I had read so many books translated from Russian, but somehow no books by women, which seemed ridiculous. When I set out to remedy that, Teffi was one of those names that I ran into, over and over.

I loved this just like multiple people told me I would. There are a few odd/sour notes when describing people of different races, and Teffi's fame as a writer certainly cushions her experiences, but this memoir of being a refugee in a time of upheaval bears some uncomfortably timely observations.

The constant guessing is what feels most exhausting to imagine. Guessing where it is safe to flee to. Guessing when it is time to pack up once again. The scarcity of information and the constant quest for more. Never knowing if each exile is permanent, if you will ever see any of these series of homes again.

I need to keep an eye out for more of her writing. ( )

Born in St. Petersburg in 1872, Teffi’s first career had been brilliant: a feuillitoniste in the brittle, intelligent world of post-1905 Petersburg and Moscow, she met and was admired by the worlds of theater, literature, art, dance — and revolutionary politics.

The Bolsheviks lost all sense of humor, though, and Memories is an account of Teffi’s retreat from Moscow, autumn 1918, by train, cart, train again, through the border area between red- and white-Russian (administered by Germany), then on to Kiev, and (momentarily) French-occupied Odessa; then by ship to Sevastopol and Novorossiisk, with a quick train trip to Yekaterinodar; ultimately back to Novorossiisk for voyage (not described) to Constantinople. She is beset by war, unreliable transportation and housing, hunger, and disease; on every side people steal, disappear, are summarily shot. Her fame as playwright, columnist, and celebrity help her more than once; her manipulation of the men who hope to use her is admirable.

The handsome book, well translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg, includes a useful map, notes explaining people and places and clarifying political and intellectual details of the time, but lacks index and, worse, chronology.

Teffi’s optimistic pragmatism and alert eye to absurdity bring Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française and Marta Hillers’s A Woman in Berlin to mind. But Némirovsky died soon after writing her book; Hillers renounced writing after hers: Teffi went on to a second, 30-year career in Paris after the journey described in Memories.

Memories contains an introduction by Edythe Haber, who subsequently produced a biography, Teffi: A Life of Letters and of Laughter: this should be very interesting — as should two collections of her Paris writins: Subtly Worded (stories), Pushkin Press, 2014, and Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The best of Teffi, New York Review Books, 2016. ( )

Teffi was a famous and much-loved a writer in pre-revolutionary Russia. Lenin was a fan, though she was no fan of his, and so was the Czar. She wrote short, humorous pieces for left-wing magazines. Teffi had supported the first revolution, but not the subsequent Bolshevic revolution that overthrew the provisional government. This memoir describes her flight from Russia, ahead of the Bolshevic army. Initially she left for what she thought was a temporary sojourn in Odessa, where there was plenty of food, unlike Moscow and St Petersburg, comfortable accommodation, and the opportunity to perform readings of her work. She believed that the Bolsheviks would not endure, and had no idea that she was leaving Russia for ever.

Teffi writes lightly of tragedy. She observes dishonesty and betrayal with sardonic humour, and of barbarity with humanity, even compassion. Her lightness of touch is a counterpoint to the disasters she describes: people she last saw in a drawing room in St Petersburg executed for treason; gay and frivolous young men on their way fight and die for a doomed cause; the barbarity of the White colonel whose wife and children were tortured in front of him. Interspersed with the tragic episodes are the frivolous stories of actors and plays, new journals popping up overnight, women fitting in a last hair appointment before they flee.

The translation, by a string of people that includes Robert Chandler, flows well without jarring, and, as far as I can judge, does a good job of imparting Teffi's humour. ( )

Engrossing glimpse into the past ( )