The Accompanist.

London:: Collins, 1987.. 1st English Edition.. Hardbound . BINDING/CONDITION: blue binding with gilt spine text; a Very Good book, with a Very Good dust jacket; publisher's price on the jacket flap is intact.. 8vo (8.5 inches tall) . Description: The jacket art comes from a painting, Portrait of Nadejda Jdanovitch at the piano by Pavel Fedotov. ''Sonechka is a shy and gauche nineteen year old who has struggled unsuccessfully to come to terms with her illegitimate birth, when she is employed as an accompanist for a famous soprano in post-Revolutionary Russia. The young girl serves in all the diva's affairs, performing menial tasks which go unnoticed, just as her beautiful piano playing is overlooked in the rapturous praise showered on her famous mistress. Nina Berberova has drawn a brilliant portrait of the anguish of a woman doomed from before her birth it seems to live in the shadow of others.'' The about-the-author blurb tells us that Nina Berberova was born in Russia in 1901 and remained there until 1922. She moved to the U.S. at the end of 1950, with $63.60 in her pocket book, and not knowing the English language. She had eight jobs in eight years and studied English at night. Between 1958-63 she was a professor of Russian Literature at Yale Graduate School and in 1963 moved to Princeton, as professor of Russian Literature, Graduate School. She died in 1993.