Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Winter 1916: St. Petersburg, Russia, is on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar's secret police.Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and their dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction.

Twenty years later, Sashenka is married to a powerful, rising Soviet leader with whom she has two children. Around her people are disappearing, while in the secret world of the elite her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair that 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 heartbreaking tale of betrayal and redemption, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism--and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.

Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and studied history at Cambridge University's Gonville & Caius College. The Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Awards were all shortlisted for Catherine the Great & Potemkin. The British Book Awards awarded Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar the Historical Book of the Year Prize. Young Stalin received the Costa Biography Award in the United Kingdom, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography in the United States, the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique in France, and the Kreisky Prize for Political Writing in Austria. He resides in London with his wife, novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.