In the Blue House

Hounded from country to country by Stalin's agents, Leon Trotsky finally finds refuge in Mexico as the guest of the artist Diego Rivera and his charismatic wife Frida Kahlo. But the years spent in Frida's family home, the Blue House, prove also to be his last. Meaghan Delahunt unravels the passions and betrayals of Trotsky's final years in Mexico, while laying before the reader a panorama of Russian history during the first half of the twentieth century. We hear from Stalin's...
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Hounded from country to country by Stalin's agents, Leon Trotsky finally finds refuge in Mexico as the guest of the artist Diego Rivera and his charismatic wife Frida Kahlo. But the years spent in Frida's family home, the Blue House, prove also to be his last.
Meaghan Delahunt unravels the passions and betrayals of Trotsky's final years in Mexico, while laying before the reader a panorama of Russian history during the first half of the twentieth century. We hear from Stalin's desolate young wife and from Stalin at the end of his turbulent life; Trotsky's father, baffled by the Revolution and his son's fame; and from Trotsky himself, still smarting from his brief love affair with the mesmerising Frida. Their voices mingle with the tales of the lesser known- the Mexican Judas-maker who foretells Trotsky's death; a Bolshevik engineer surviving the chill of the Stalinist regime; and the bodyguard who is unable to prevent Trotsky's assassination.
This is a remarkable debut, a work of deep understanding and stunning literary artistry. It is as personal and confiding as a whisper but reverberates with the momentous words and voices of history.