Marina Tsvetaeva’s return to her homeland in 1939, following her husband, a Soviet intelligence officer, who hastily left France after the scandal with the murder of the “defector” Ignatius Reiss, is the theme of this book by Irma Kudrova. The narrative makes extensive use of previously inaccessible documents from the KGB archives, memories of eyewitnesses and materials from personal archives. The story of the death of Marina Tsvetaeva, written in the genre of documentary historical prose, reads like a tragic detective story. The mystery of the poet’s death in 1941 in Yelabuga appears in a new light - and yet remains a mystery... In the Appendices are the protocols of Tsvetaeva’s interrogations in the prefecture of Paris, as well as the author’s essay “The Mystery of Crime and a Pure Heart” - about one of the recurring motifs of the poet’s work.< /p>