In the 1930s, as waves of war and persecution were crashing over Europe, two young Jewish women began separate journeys of survival. One, a Polish-born woman from Bialystok, where virtually the entire Jewish community would soon be sent to the ghetto and from there to Hitler's concentration camps, was determined not only to live but to live with pride and defiance. The other, a Russian-born intellectual and introvert, would eventually become a high-level censor under Stalin's regime. At war's end, both women found themselves in Moscow, where informers lurked on every corner and anti-Semitism reigned. It was there that Ester and Ruzya would first cross paths, there that they became the closest of friends and learned to trust each other with their lives.

In this deeply moving family memoir, journalist Masha Gessen tells the story of her two beloved grandmothers: Ester, the quicksilver rebel who continually battled the forces of tyranny; Ruzya, a single mother who joined the Communist Party under duress and made the compromises the regime exacted of all its citizens. Both lost their first loves in the war. Both suffered unhappy unions. Both were gifted linguists who made their living as translators. And both had children — Ester a boy, and Ruzya a girl — who would grow up, fall in love, and have two children of their own: Masha and her younger brother.

With grace, candor, and meticulous research, Gessen peels back the layers of secrecy surrounding her grandmothers? lives. As she follows them through this remarkable period in history — from the Stalin purges to the Holocaust, from the rise of Zionism to the fall of communism — she describes how each of her grandmothers, and before them her great-grandfather, tried to navigate a dangerous line between conscience and compromise.

Ester and Ruzya is a spellbinding work of storytelling, filled with political intrigue and passionate emotion, acts of courage and acts of betrayal. At once an intimate family chronicle and a fascinating historical tale, it interweaves the stories of two women with a brilliant vision of Russian history. The result is a memoir that reads like a novel — and an extraordinary testament to the bonds of family and the power of hope, love, and endurance.

"After leaving Russia in 1981 when she was 14, journalist Gessen visited 10 years later and moved back a few years after that. The transition represents the two major themes of her memoir: displacement and familial ties. After reconnecting with her Russian kin, Gessen seeks to explore her roots. Rather than tell her own story, Gessen reaches into her family's past, weaving together the stories of her two grandmothers as they live through the turmoil and terror of the first half of the 20th century. The two Jewish women, born in separate countries, meet and become friends in 1949, after fleeing persecution and war in Poland and Russia. The terrors strengthen their friendship, Gessen writes: 'It was probably most like family: a bond that once established, was believed permanent.' Both have children, who then fall in love with each other and have children of their own, including Gessen. By using the present tense, Gessen gives the memoir a sense of immediacy. She also deftly puts her grandmothers' experiences in context by describing the brutal realities of Stalin's regime and the desperation of Jews trying to escape Nazi concentration camps. This blend of historical depth with personal experience is a powerful mix, illuminating how family and friendship can grow in even the darkest eras." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"A journalist's memoir of her grandmothers also paints an eloquent portrait of two totalitarian powers, the havoc they wrought, and the countless burdens they imposed on ordinary families....A masterful chronicle of dark and dangerous years, and a distinguished addition to the history of totalitarianism." Kirkus Reviews

"Reviewers sometimes call a work of nonfiction 'as exciting as a novel,' but that would be an understatement applied to this extraordinary family memoir....Ester and Ruzya will remind you how much life, history and emotional and moral complexity the genre can convey in the hands of a wonderful writer." Katha Pollitt, The New York Times Book Review

"A loving memoir of two grandmothers that offers a penetrating look at two killer regimes. Masha Gessen's wonderful book portrays human beings trying to live justly when there is virtually no way to do so." William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

"This astonishing and deeply moving story is related with a masterful eye for the human detail that makes history come alive." Booklist

"Ruzya's granddaughter, Masha Gessen, is back living in Moscow, and has written this poignant account of the lives of her grandmothers, Ruzya and Ester Goldberg." Baltimore Sun

"Gessen offers the reader an extended case study in the moral ambiguity of life in a dictatorship..." Washington Post

To fourteen-year-old Masha Gessen, Ester the rebel and Ruzya the censor were not hostages to history but simply her beloved grandmothers. And when she and her parents emigrated to the United States in 1981, once the Soviet Union began allowing its Jewish citizens to leave, she feared she would never see these women again. Ten years later, however, she was able to return to Moscow, this time as a young journalist on assignment, and Ester and Ruzya were there to meet her at the airport. Over the course of the years that followed, she drew them out about their lives, learning what it meant to have struggled through the cataclysmic upheavals of the war, the Holocaust, and Stalin's terror. Both women lost the men they loved during the war, both were Jews under an oppressive and increasingly anti-Semitic regime, and both had careers that made use of their gifts for foreign languages. But these two close friends make very different choices in response to the intolerable demands of their time.

A moving portrayal of how overwhelming events force people to search for the decent compromise, the right choice when there is no choice at all, this narrative casts a warm human light on a dark and troubled time in history.

Masha Gessen was born in the U.S.S.R., emigrated to the United States when she was fourteen years old, and later returned to Russia as a foreign correspondent. She makes her permanent home in Moscow with her partner, Svenya, and their two children but is currently living in Boston, where she has a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard.