Book description
Winter, 1916. I
n St Petersburg, snow is falling in a country on the brink of
revolution. Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is
just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute
friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her role in a
dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction.
Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband and two
children. Around her people are disappearing but her own family is
safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will
have devastating consequences.
Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young
historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a
heart-breaking story of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and
unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice ...
Simon Montefiore's ancestors escaped from the Tsarist Empire at
the turn of the century, and sparked his lifelong interest in Russia.
As a correspondent in the early 1990s, he covered the wars and
turbulence of the fall of the Soviet Union - from Georgia and Chechnya
to Moscow and St Petersburg. As a historian, he has spent the last ten
years researching the Russian archives. The personal stories he found
there and his interviews with families continue to inspire his fiction
and non-fiction.
Born in 1965, Simon Montefiore lives in London with his wife, the
novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.
For further details about the author and his books, please visit his
website: www. simonsebagmontefiore. com
