Negotiating their way through Stalinist terrors, Nazi slavery and British colonial brutality, Pasha Zayky and his wife, Tanya, tell first-hand how a loving family fight for survival during the hell of the twentieth century.
Readers follow this family from a war-torn Berlin to a forbidding post-war London, with flash-backs to 1930s Soviet Russia along the way, until they arrive in Africa where nationalist forces are challenging British rule. Returning to the glamour and menace of 1960s London, a grandson, Misha, is born and raised by his baboushka Tanya. With Misha taking over as narrator the story ends with a chance meeting in the Russian city of Krasnodar in the early 1990s.
In their struggle, Pasha and Tanya must embrace each prevailing dogma, subtly editing their back-story accordingly, but at the cost of stealing the truth from subsequent generations. We are left to wonder, how many memories are merely lies?