In the Blue House

Meaghan Delahunt

From Shelf: The 2001 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist

Hounded from country to country by Stalin's agents, Leon Trotsky finds refuge in Mexico with artist Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. The passions and betrayals of Trotsky's final years in Mexico are unravelled, revealing a panorama of Russian history during the first half of the 20th century.

'The blue rectangle which enclosed me for a time and made me feel safe. The blue embrace...For six weeks, at the age of fifty-nine, one last dance with youth. It stays with me, the memory of her, and the view from that room in her 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 beautiful wife Frida Kahlo. But the extraordinary years spent in Frida's beloved family home, The Blue House, prove also to be his last. The passions and betrayals of Trotsky's final years in Mexico are unravelled, revealing too a panorama of Russian history during the first half of the twentieth century. As personal and confiding as a whisper IN THE BLUE HOUSE reverberates with the momentous words and voices of history.

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