'A joke is not so funny when you are living inside it. It begins to seem more like a tragedy.’ The words of Russian comic writer, Teffi, the pseudonym of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya - still well known in Russia today, but relatively unknown in the West.

Teffi was a literary superstar in Russia, before and after the Revolution. Teffi was also a feminist and socialist, but she hated the Bolsheviks and their leader, Lenin.

After the October revolution of 1917, she was forced into exile and although her work remained popular in Russia, Teffi's work is largely unknown in the West.