by Allan Benedict Ho
"Dmitry Shostakovich's memoirs, Testimony, 'related to and edited by Solomon Volkov', have been the subject of fierce debate since their publication in 1979. Was Testimony a forgery, made up by an impudent impostor, or was it the deathbed confession of a bent, but unbroken, man? The authenticity of Testimony first came under attack from the Soviet government and then from commentators whom Vladimir Ashkenazy in his Overture calls Soviet stooges in the West; even now, years after the fall of the communist regime, a coterie of well-placed Western musicologists have regularly raised objections to Testimony, hoping with each attack to undermine the picture of Shostakovich presented in his memoirs that of a man of enormous moral stature, bitterly disillusioned with the Soviet system. In Shostakovich Reconsidered Allan Ho and Dmitry Feofanov systematically address all of the accusations levelled at Testimony and Solomon Volkov, Shostakovich's amanuensis, amassing an enormous amount of materi
Roald Dahl
Zora Neale Hurston
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