Sergey Prokofiev diaries. 1924-1933, prodigal son - Sergey Prokofiev

The third and final volume of Prokofiev's Diaries covers the
years 1924 to1933 when he was living in Paris. Intimate accounts of the
successes and disappointments of a great creative artist at the heart of
the European arts world between the two World Wars jostle with witty
and trenchant commentaries on the personalities who made up this world.

The Diaries document the complex emotional inner world of a
Russian exile uncomfortably aware of the nature of life in Stalin's
Russia yet increasingly persuaded that his creative gifts would never
achieve full maturity separated from the culture, people and land of his
birthplace. Since even Prokofiev knew that the USSR was hardly the
place to commit inner reflections to paper, the Diaries come to
an end after June 1933 although it would be another three years before
he, together with his wife and children, finally exchanged the free if
materially uncertain life of a cosmopolitan Parisian celebrity for
Soviet citizenship and the credo of Socialist Realism within which it
struggled to straitjacket its artists.

Volume Three continues
the kaleidoscopic impressions and the stylish language - Prokofiev was
almost as gifted and idiosyncratic a writer as he was a composer - of its
predecessors.