PART I: DOCUMENTS: Look after your son's talents : the literary notebook of Mariya Prokofieva / edited, translated and introduced by Pamela Davidson -- The Krzhizhanovsky-Prokofiev Collaboration on Eugene Onegin, 1936 (A lesser-known casualty of the Pushkin death jubilee) / introductory essay, commentar and translation byCaryl Emerson -- Prokofiev and Atovmyan : Correspondence, 1933-1952 / introduction and commentary by Nelly Kravetz ; translation by Simon Morrison -- Prokofiev's immortalization / Leonid Maximekov -- PART II: ESSAYS: I came too soon : Prokofiev's early career in America / Stephen D. Press -- Lieutenant Kizhe : new media, new means / Kevin Bartig -- Observations on Prokofiev's sketchbooks / Mark Aranovsky ; translation by Jason Strudler -- Prokofiev on the Los Angeles Limited / Elizabeth Bergman -- Between two aesthetics : the revision of Pilnyak's Mahogany and Prokofiev's Fourth Symphony / Marina Frolova-Walker -- After Prokofiev / Peter J. Schmelz -- Beyond Death and Evil : Prokofiev's spirituality and Christian Science / Leon Botstein

Sergey Prokofiev, arguably the most popular composer of the twentieth century, led a life of triumph and tragedy. The story of his prodigious childhood in tsarist Russia, maturation in the West, and rise and fall as a Stalinist-era composer is filled with unresolved questions. This book probes beneath the surface of his career and contextualizes his contributions to music on both sides of the nascent Cold War divide. The book contains previously unknown documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow and the Prokofiev Estate in Paris. The literary notebook of the composer's mother, Mariya Grigoryevna, illuminates her involvement in his education and is translated in full, as are ninety-eight letters between the composer and his business partner, Levon Atovmyan. The collection also includes a translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's unperformed stage adaptation of Eugene Onegin, for which Prokofiev composed incidental music in 1936