Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich

Limelight Editions, 1984. 7th. Softcover. Very Good. 1984 softcover. UNREAD COPY with unmarked, firmly bound pages. Green paper cover shows minor shelf wear only. Overall, a bright, presentable copy. Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis. Harold C Schonberg, writing in the New York Times Book Review about TESTIMONY by Dmitri Shostakovich: "An extremely powerful, grim, gripping book and one that will set the record straight... These are not the remarks of a man who was flung out of the party . Aside from two collisions with the authorities, Shostakovich was in favor until the very end. The memoirs are a serious indictment of past and present Russia, as wel as the recollections of a life apparently spent in fear and despair... Obviously the final text, with its attack on the Stalin period and the Soviet musical bureaucracy, could not be published in the Soviet Union. Mr Volkov [the book's editor Solomon Volkov] 'took measures' to get the manuscript to the West. Shostakovich stipulated that the book not be published until aftermhis death... TESTIMONY is indeed the testimony of a major creator in music. But it is much mor than that. The book could have been subtitled 'The Life of the Russian Intellectual Under Stalin.'