Sashenka
Winter, 1916. In 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 …
Excellent...the historical detail is strong a good historical novel you have to recreate that world, both physically and intellectually this has been achieved in abundance. A clever plot that twists and turns, astonishing coincidences, emotive family separations all combine to make Sashenka an addictive page-turner
The Author
Simon Montefiore
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 helped inspire this novel.
His history books, Catherine the Great & Potemkin and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar have been acclaimed bestsellers in over 30 languages. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Prize and the LA Times Book Prize.
Born in 1965, Simon Montefiore lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.