Questions
Before you open the book
A few answers about the author and the diary. The life inside the diary — Russian daily life, culture, food, and the places she loves — she tells there, at the length they deserve.
Who is Francesca de Bardin?
She is an American writer living in Moscow. Born in San Francisco to Italian parents, she spent thirty years as an entrepreneur in New York, then fifteen years between Paris and New York with her husband, Claude de Bardin, and eight years in the south of France after his death. In January 2022 she moved to Moscow. Moscow Diary is her account of that life.
What is Moscow Diary?
It is a personal diary, written in English and published in 2024, about an American making a home in the Russian capital. She shares the challenges and the surprises, with history, humor, and her own sense of what is worth seeing. It is the book she wishes had existed when all she had was the Western description of Russia.
Why read it instead of another book about Russia?
Because the author pays rent there. She is not passing through on a panel, and she is not summarizing someone else’s reporting. If you want to know what living in Russia has felt like to a widely traveled American woman who is glad she came, this is her voice, at eye level.
Is it a political book?
It is a life, and a life in Moscow cannot step around the way Russia is talked about. She wrote in part because that talk no longer matched her days. You will meet her values. You will also meet taxis, dinners, friendships, and the ordinary week. She trusts you to hold both.
What is it like to live in Russia?
That is the question the book exists to answer, and she refuses to hand it to a slogan. She found a welcome, and a daily city, that did not resemble the portrait she had been given in the West. How safe the streets felt, what the culture asked of her, what she ate, and where she sends a visitor: those pages are the reason to read her, not to stop here.
Do I need to know Russia, or Russian, already?
No. The book is in English. Francesca arrived knowing how to say yes and no. A good part of the pleasure is watching a capable woman become a beginner, and watching the city meet her. Russian readers can read this website in Russian; the diary itself is her English.
Is there a Russian edition?
The edition offered here is in English. If a Russian edition is published, it will be announced on the page where the book is sold.
Where can I buy Moscow Diary?
It was published by Ridero in 2024. The ISBN is 978-5-0064-8702-4. The English edition is on Amazon.