With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. ix, 164 pages: illustrations; 24 cm Hardcover. ISBN: 9780674802551, 0674802551.

Very good+ in very good+ jacket, now in archival mylar

"In 1982 a young Frenchman, an active member of the small Trotskyite group in Paris, was invited to join the exiled Trotsky to serve as his secretary, translator, and bodyguard. He was twenty years old when he arrived at the Turkish island of Prinkipo, where Trotsky and his wife had been living since their expulsion from Russia in 1929. He stayed with them for seven years, at Prinkipo, in France, briefly in Norway, and finally, from January 1937 to November 1939--nine months prior to Trotsky's assassination--in the Mexican town of Coyoacán. In this small book Mr. van Heijenoort gives his recollections of those years, based on memory, on notes he kept at the time, and on documents in the Trotsky archives at Harvard. He does not attempt a full-length portrait of Trotsky or an analysis of his character or his ideas; his purpose is to set down, for the record, incidents and details that are known to himself alone, and also to correct factual errors that have appeared in published works. As a primary document, his narrative will be of great value to students and biographers of Leon Trotsky."--Jacket