The first single-volume history of the century's most tragic and brutal revolution; a brilliant, highly readable narrative in the manner of Simon Schama's Citizens.

"A memorably good book... A People's Tragedy combines dramatic power, absorbing narrative and magisterial scholarship - a magnificent tour de force." -- Christopher Andrew Sunday Telegraph "I doubt if there is anyone in the world who knows the revolution as well as he does." -- Norman Stone Sunday Times "Written with verve and enlivened by anecdote, this is a comprehensive, fair minded account... Figes' main objective is to put the masses back in their rightful place, and this he has triumphantly done... Profoundly researched, brilliantly written, full of wit, wisdom and humanity. It is by far the best history of the Russian Revolution I have ever read." -- Frank McLynn Glasgow Herald "This books is not just a history; it is an item of history... Orlando Figes has taken the chance to display the very experience of revolution as it affected millions of ordinary Russians." -- Neal Ascherson Independent on Sunday "It balances big ideas with vivid personal histories and must be the most moving account of the Russian Revolution since Doctor Zhivago." -- Lucasta Miller Independent

Orlando Figes is a professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, and former University Lecturer in History at Cambridge. Born in London in 1959, he graduated with a double-starred first in History from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1982. His first book, Peasant Russia, Civil War, was described by one reviewer as 'one of the most important books ever published on the Russian Revolution'. His website can be found at www.orlandofiges.co.uk