“What comes out of my mouth is driven by anger: at my righteous mother who refuses to look out the window and see there is no bright dawn on the horizon; at my black-hearted country that inspired her, forged her into steel, and deceived her.”
Elena Gorokhova’s first memoir A Mountain of Crumbs provides readers with a fascinating look at what it was like to grow up in Soviet Russia during the 1960s. Her mother, a doctor, raises Elena and her sister, Marina, in a traditional, monochromatic Russian household. Gorokhova provides insight into the complexity of the government and the fear its citizens face under economic and social oppression.