The accompanist of the title is Sonechka, an 18-year-old girl, talented but

impoverished and self-deprecating by reason of her lowly origin. She is abruptly lifted from her bleak life in St. Petersburg when a famous soprano, Maria Travin, employs her as a traveling companion. The ambitious singer and her successful bourgeois husband are the center of a coterie that flows with them from Moscow to Paris in 1920, and Sonechka becomes privy to their sophisticated relationships. A confidante to Maria and yet ever watchful, insecure and apart, Sonechka internalizes her distress with life in postwar Russia and harbors plans for revenge on the affluent, beautiful diva by exposing her extramarital affair. The resolution of her plan comes about in an unexpected manner, one that is entirely out of Sonechka's control but that frees her as, in a different way, it frees the implacable diva. Exquisitely spare, the first-person narrative of this novella has a subdued intensity.

Russian-born Berberova lives in New Jersey, where she was professor of Russian literature at Princeton.

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妮娜．貝蓓洛娃作品目錄（以法文版為準）徐錦成、嚴慧瑩編

自傳：

1.重點是我劃的（C"est Moi Qui Souligne, 1960~1966/1989）

中篇小說 ：

2.伴奏者（L"accompagnatrice, 1934/1985）

3.奴才與妓女（Le Laquais Et La Putain, 1937/1986）

4.阿斯塔雪夫在巴黎（Astachev A Paris, 1938/1988）

5.反叛的蘆葦（Le Roseau revolte, 1958/1988）

6.莫札特的復活（La Resurrection De Mozart, 1940/1989）

7.黑疵（Le Mal Noir, 1959/1989）

8.披肩與眼淚（De Cape Et De Larmes,1941/1990）

9.羅根瓦（Roquenval, 1936/1991）

l0.流亡的故事（Recits De L"exil, 1934~1959/1991）

短篇小說集：

11.非關愛情（Ou Il N"est Pas Question D"amour, 1931~1940/1993）

傳記：

12.柴可夫斯基（Tchaikovski, 1936/1987）

13.布德堡男爵夫人的故事（Histoire De La Baronne Boudberg, 1978~1980/1988）

14.鮑羅定（Borodine, 1937/1989）

15.亞歷山大．布洛克和他的時代（Slexandre Blok Et Son Temps, 1947/1991）

報導文學／評論：

16.凱夫特契科事件（L,affaire Kravtchenko, 1949/1990）

17. 20 世紀俄國的共濟會（Les Francs-macons Russes Du Xx Siecle, 1986/1990）

18.紀念施利曼（A La Memoire De Schliemann, 1958/1991）

19.畢朗庫的傳聞（Chroniques De Billancourt, 1928~1940/1992）

20.屠格涅夫圖書館的消失（Disparition De La Bibliotheque Tourhueniev, 不詳/1990）

註：Nina Beberova的所有作品法文版，皆由Actes Sud出版社出版。括弧中所列年份，第一個為作品寫作年份，第二個為法譯本出版年份。