In his old age in France, his adopted homeland, Viktor Nekrasov looked back on his eventful life and speculated on how it might have turned out had he pursued a different direction at certain crucial moments. As a Russian living through most of the twentieth century, Nekrasov's destiny was shaped by the great upheavals of war and revolution.

Viktor Platonovich Nekrasov was born in Kiev on 17 June 1911. There are many references, though scattered, to Nekrasov's childhood throughout his work. The younger of two sons in a family that belonged to the radical intelligentsia, he was taken to Paris as a child; he was just old enough to remember the early months of World War I and the zeppelins that floated over the city. The moving force behind this transfer to Paris--as indeed behind all his early years--was his mother, Zinaida Nikolaevna Nekrasova. She had completed her education in...