A Memory of Lies

A family must adapt to survive in war-torn Europe and emerging Africa. But at what cost?

Negotiating their way through Stalinist terrors, Nazi slavery and British colonial brutality, Pasha Zayky and his wife, Tanya, tell first-hand how a loving family fight for survival during the hell of the twentieth century.

Readers follow this family from a war-torn Berlin to a forbidding post-war London, with flashbacks to 1930s Soviet Russia along the way, until they arrive in Africa where nationalist forces are challenging British rule. Returning to the glamour and menace of 1960s London, a grandson, Misha, is born and raised by his baboushka Tanya. With Misha taking over as narrator, the story ends with a chance meeting in the Russian city of Krasnodar in the early 1990s.

In their struggle, Pasha and Tanya must embrace each prevailing dogma, subtly editing their back-story accordingly, but at the cost of stealing the truth from subsequent generations. We are left to wonder – how many memories are merely lies?

About the Author

JOHNNIE GALLOP was born and raised in south London, the only child of a carpenter and a school cleaner. His mum cleaned the school he attended and in the evenings, as she mopped the floors, Johnnie sat in the library and read just about every book there – particularly the old and tattered history books. One day, in the 1970s, the school received money from the government for brand new books. The entire existing library was thrown in a huge metal paladin along with the waste from that day’s school dinner. Johnnie climbed inside the bin to rescue the books by the armful and then heaved them all home in his mum’s wheelie shopping trolley. They were his friends, many are still. Johnnie has lived his life in reverse. After school he worked in a bank for 32 years, becoming the manager, before leaving to finish his A levels and study Economic History at the London School of Economics. 

“A rattling good story, gripping and vivid.” Caradoc King