At Home and Abroad

Memories of Tatyana Pavlovna Kaptereva-Shambinago, a renowned specialist in the history of art of Spain, Portugal, and the Maghreb countries, a full member of the Russian Academy of Arts, are divided into two, in general, equal parts, each of which, in full accordance with the title of the book, tells about life at home and the travels abroad undertaken after the war.
The first part of the book is dedicated to the old Moscow intelligentsia, one of the centers of Russian culture, which, to one extent or another, survived in the whirlpool of the grand events of the era, at the fracture of domestic artistic traditions. The memories mainly cover the 1930s, a "period in which family and social events in childhood and youth memory gained concrete expressiveness over time".
The second part of the memories concerns, according to the author, "a small fraction of what was seen and experienced" during trips abroad. The memories consist of three narrative sketches dedicated to travels made in the 1950s-1960s. The first of them describes the circumstances, peculiarities, and events of one of the earliest mass departures of Soviet people abroad.
The second trip to Cuba and the United States in 1960-1961 occurred during a period of growing tensions between the countries, the breaking of diplomatic relations between them, and soon the Caribbean crisis.
The third story is devoted to the author's nearly three-month business trip to Egypt, a country that possesses a special attractive force for anyone who finds themselves here, even for a short time.
The book is richly illustrated with rare photographs from the author's family archive.