How Leon Trotsky met his end in Mexico in 1940 is well known - struck on the head with what Mary-Kay Wilmers calls "the most famous murder weapon in modern history". Less well known is that the Soviet agent waiting to drive the assassin away was her relative. Wilmers pieces together what she can of the shadowy life of Leonid Eitingon, a high-level KGB killer.

Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, digs deep into the history of her mother's extraordinary Russian Jewish family, the Eit­ingons, some of whom were living in the west as communism took hold in the east. She looks for clues that her grandfather's uncle Max, a protégé of Freud in Vienna, and Motty, a New York fur trader, were also working for Stalin. What emerges is a fascinating, if sometimes rambling, story of family secrets and silences "where little is known for sure".

The Eitingons: a 20th-Century Story
Mary-Kay Wilmers
Faber & Faber, 476pp, £20

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website