Konkordia Terentyevna Landau-Drobantseva, the wife of the brilliant physicist Lev Landau, began writing her memoirs after her husband's death in 1968 and worked on them for more than ten years… The result was three substantial volumes. Bound and supplemented with photographic documents, they circulated for some time in samizdat form among physicists, but soon almost all copies were destroyed by academicians and their wives, who hypocritically took offense at this frank text, the shocking details of the private lives of the great minds of the USSR, and the unflattering assessments of the "untouchables." But "manuscripts don't burn," and the appearance of Kora Landau's memoirs in book form is further proof of that.
"I wrote these memoirs only for myself, without the slightest hope of publication. To untangle the most complicated knot of my life, I had to delve into the indecent minutiae of everyday life, into the intimate aspects of human existence, carefully hidden from prying eyes, sometimes concealing so much charm, but much vileness too. I wrote only the truth, nothing but the truth..."