Sashenka

Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and was educated at Harrow School and Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. As a historian, he has written three studies of Russian power. Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. His latest book, Young Stalin, won the Costa Biography Prize, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography and the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Political Literature, and has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His books are now published in thirty-four languages. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. For further information see simonsebagmontefiore.com.

PRAISE FROM THE UK

Voted a “Top Five Summer Read of 2008” by The Observer and one of the “Ten Hottest Books this Summer” by The Independent

“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

Also by Simon Montefiore

Young Stalin

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner

Copyright

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Simon Montefiore

Originally published in Great Britain in 2008 by Transworld Publishers