Questions
Before you open the book
A few answers about the author and the diary. The life inside the diary — Russian daily life, culture, food, and the places she loves — she tells there, at the length they deserve.
Who is Francesca de Bardin?
She is an American writer living in Moscow. Born in San Francisco to Italian parents, she spent decades as an entrepreneur in New York City, then twenty years between Paris and New York with her husband, Claude de Bardin, and eight years in the south of France after his death. In January 2022 she moved to Moscow. Moscow Diary is her account of that life.
What is Moscow Diary?
It is a personal memoir, written in English and published in 2024, about an American making a home in the Russian capital. She shares the challenges and the surprises, with history, humor, and her own sense of what is worth knowing and seeing. It is the book she wishes had existed when all she had was the Western description of Russia.
Why read it instead of another book about Russia?
Because the author pays rent there. She is not passing through on a panel, and she is not summarizing someone else’s reporting. If you want to know what living in Russia has felt like to a widely traveled American woman who is glad she came, this is her voice, at eye level.
Is it a political book?
It is a life, and a life in Moscow cannot ignore the way Russia is talked about in the West. She wrote it, in part, because she saw the anti-Russian rhetoric as a deliberate strategy to be debated. You will meet her values. You will also meet taxis, dinners, friendships, and the ordinary week.
What is it like to live in Russia?
That is the question the book exists to answer, and she refuses to deliver it as a slogan. She found a welcome, vibrant, abundant city, that did not resemble the portrait in the West. How safe the streets felt, what the culture asked of her, what she ate, and where she sends a visitor: those pages are the reason to read her, not to stop here.
Is there a Russian edition?
The edition offered here is in English, on Amazon.com. The book was translated into Russian and published by Ridero in 2024.
Where can I buy Moscow Diary?
The English version is available on Amazon.com worldwide.