Saturday 19 July 2008

Review of Sashenka (Montefiore) in today's FT

In this weekend's edition of the Financial Times I've reviewed the new novel by the prize-winning historian who gave us Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Tsar. The narrative of Sashenka will come as no surprise to admirers of those histories, as its main action takes the reader back into the close circle of the Georgian Man of Steel (pictured here in stone.) And undoubtedly there is no end of dramatic material to be found in the Soviet archives: "What fascinates (Simon) Montefiore is the degenerate world of the tyrant’s court: fanaticism, self-interest, treachery, paranoia."

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