In August 1922 Lenin signed an order expelling 167 "unwanted" philosophers and academics from the new Soviet Union.

Most, like Semyon Frank and Nikolas Berdyayev, ended up in Paris, where they joined a remarkable emigre community which included novelists such as Nina Berberova and Vladimir Nabokov. Lesley Chamberlain explores the emigres' lives, visits the places the Russians made their own, looks for their ghosts and charts the survival of ideas now urgent once again after the fall of Communism.