The Testament

New York: Summit Books, 1981. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8x5x1. Signed by author. First American edition. Signed by author without inscription on front flyleaf. A few small spots on front board, jacket lightly toned with crease down rear panel, price whited out on front jacket flap. 1981 Hard Cover. 346 pp. Translated into English from the original French by Marion Wiesel. On August 12, 1952, Russia's greatest Jewish writers were secretly executed by Stalin. In this remarkable blend of history and imagination, Paltiel Kossover meets the same fate but, unlike his real-life counterparts, he is permitted to leave a written testament. From a Jewish boyhood in pre-revolutionary Russia, Paltiel traveled down a road that embraced Communism, only to return to Russia and discover a Communist Party that had become his mortal enemy. Two decades later, Paltiel's son, Grisha, reads this precious record of his father's life and finds that it illuminates the shadowed planes of his own.