Drawing on access to previously unknown or unavailable Russian-language sources, including extensive archival material, Harlow Robinson traces Prokofiev's extraordinary life from the fairy-tale world of Tsarist Russia, through his many years abroad in America and Europe, to his perplexing permanent return to Moscow in 1936 under the Soviet regime. He died on the same day as Josef Stalin, his principal persecutor, in the final irony of an intense and enigmatic career.