![]() ![]() With the start of the First World War, he stays to observe events, becoming a correspondent for the Daily News. The English writer Arthur Ransome leaves his wife and daughter in London and travels to Russia to collect folktales. The novel continues by presenting history from the perspective of an individual, an outsider. It is a fairy-tale account of the circumstances leading to the Russian Revolution, featuring the poor woodcutter, the orphaned children, the romantic but oblivious Royal family, the mad monk, the sleeping bear and the two conspirators in the wood. ![]() The first part, "A Russian Fairy Tale", deliberately evokes the atmosphere of Arthur Ransome's Old Peter's Russian Tales. He also has close contact with people working for the British government, and must decide where his loyalties lie. He becomes acquainted with the leading Bolsheviks, and begins a romance with Trotsky's secretary Evgenia who will become his second wife. The novel describes the origins and events of the Russian Revolution, interwoven with the experiences of Arthur Ransome, then a journalist in Russia. ![]()
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