Dacha Tales: Life in the Russian Hinterland

LARISA ZALESOVA - DOCTOROW is a journalist and critic who is widely published in print and internet media in Russia and Western Europe, where her articles number in the hundreds. Zalesova lives in both St Petersburg, Russia and Brussels, Belgium. She is a member of the Union of Journalists of Russia and the Union of Music Critics of Belgium. Zalesova has published two novels. Live as Before, which appeared six years ago, was the first Russian novel dedicated to a heroine coping with breast cancer. The second novel, The Mosaic of My Life, released in May 2020, was written in the classical tradition of Tolstoy. It covers a broad swathe of 20th century Russian history from tsarist times up to the 1950s. The story is told from the standpoint of one family in the words of the daughter of a well-known opera diva. Since even the elite could fall afoul of the regime and wind up in a KGB prison facing possible summary execution, the story takes the reader across society from top to bottom.