Sashenka

“This completely addictive story offers an authoritative insight into Stalin’s USSR and, in its huge characters and epic ambition, carries echoes of Tolstoy himself.”

—Ross Gilfillan, Daily Mail

“[Sashenka’s] agonizing adult dilemma, her attempts to save the children she loves, [is] so powerfully and persuasively set out that, by the time I finally put the book down, long after midnight, I was in tears.”

—Vanora Bennett, The Times

“Excellent…. A powerful novel, erudite and well structured, and with a heroine who lingers in the mind when the story is finished.”

—Simon Baker, The Spectator

“Sweeps the brittle high society of pre-revolutionary St Petersburg, the terror-chilled jails of Stalin’s purges and the secrets of 1990s Moscow archives into a tragic panorama. This family saga captures both the epic travails of a Bolshevik elite that fell from grace, and also—ambitiously—the enigmas of historical knowledge itself.”

—Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

“To write a good historical novel, you have to recreate that world both physically and intellectually—and there must be a sense that history is driving the plot forward. Montefiore succeeds on all counts.”

—Evening Standard

“Agile plotting, vivid characterization… Sashenka [is] an addictive page-turner with an elegant, steely edge of verisimilitude.”

—The Sunday Telegraph