Sashenka

De: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrado por: Tuppence Middleton

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore, read by Tuppence Middleton.

Winter, 1916: in St Petersburg, Russia, on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, 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 16. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction.

Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband with whom she has 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 heartbreaking tale of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.

©2017 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2017 Random House Audiobooks

Soap opera writing

I enjoyed the author‘s non-fiction books. A fiction writer he is not. Mainly clicheed cardboard characters loosly put in historic context. It feels like a mediocre teen romance novel. Women‘s hearts are ‚fluttering‘, male tongues being stuck into women‘s mouths make them fall in love….it‘s difficult to follow and care about characters with such caricature shallowness for 19 hours…