Sergei Prokofiev was a musical genius and this book is a very perceptive study of the man, but also it’s a mirror reflection of the problems, conflicts and turmoils associated with the lives of creative artists in Russia.

The author is himself a musician and has written several biographies of musician. This is one of his best.

Prokofiev died on 5th March 1953, fifty-five minutes before Stalin. He was 61. At his memorial service, David Oistrakh played the first and third movements of the composer’s First Violin Sonata. Then 37, Mira Mendelson devoted herself to looking after the composer’s archive and effects until her own death in 1968. 

Sergei Prokofiev: a Soviet tragedy – Victor Seroff, ISBN ‎ 978-0090961603