Compassion

"Poetry is more respected in Russia than anywhere else. People are killed for it."In 1938, during the Stalin Terror, Nina writes "Witness," a poem about the purges. Working secretly at night, alone in her room, she learns each line of the poem by heart, and then puts a match to the pages. Paper is dangerous, and Nina is a marked woman. Once a celebrated poet, she is forbidden to publish. If the NKVD find "Witness," they will send her to the camps.In London, Andrei, who left Nina behind when he was forced to flee Russia, despairs at the thought that she might already be dead. It's been years since he had news of her. Is she surviving? Have the purges swallowed her up?When "Witness" is finally published in Russia fifty years later, Andrei's granddaughter Charlotte buys him a copy in Moscow and takes it back to London. Andrei is now over ninety, and a world-famous sculptor. After refusing for years to talk about the past, he consents to tell Charlotte about his love affair with Nina.COMPASSION explores the power of memory to preserve the past. In the 1930s, Stalin attempted to wipe out history, but Nina saw and remembered everything, and wove what she had witnessed into a poem. Fifty years later, Andrei chooses Charlotte to guard Nina's memory.The narrative moves from Andrei, telling his story to Charlotte in 1989, to Nina writing a memoir of the same events in 1943, to Charlotte melding the different accounts into a book that will record what has never been written down, and ensure that Nina's stand against tyranny will not be forgotten.COMPASSION was inspired partly by Anna Akhmatova's poem "Requiem," and partly by her affair with the artist Boris Anrep, who moved to England after the Revolution. Akhmatova never forgot him, and they were briefly reunited in London in 1966. The love that defied space and time is the foundation for COMPASSION. The models for Andrei and Nina were for the most part Anrep and Akhmatova, even though I had to take extensive biographical liberties to make the project work.The title of the book comes from Boris Anrep. One of the mosaics he created for the vestibule of the National Gallery in London represents Akhmatova. Anrep called it "Compassion."