[I wrote this review in 2010]

** A well researched historical novel - with a level of detail that brings the Russian Revolution right into your living room.**

Sashenka - where to start? - she begins in the story as an idealistic, intelligent educated young woman. At the age of sixteen she is in that transitory period between a child's world and an adult's world. Her parents and beloved English nanny see her very much as inhabiting the former, but Shashenka has by this time already been in rebellion against the materialistic world of her parents and peers at school, and has been inhabiting a darker and more idealistic world. Already at odds with the riches, indulgences and frivolities of upper class society, Shashenka has been recruited by her Uncle Mendel into an idealistic underworld of socialism, and the Communist Party. Party numbers are low in St. Petersburg in 1916 and Shashenka "Comrade Snowfox" has an important part to play in running messages, arms, ammunition and information. A brief run in with the law leads her down some darker alleys, and trying to play a game of double-deceit she ends up in a series of flirtatious meetings with a Tsarist Gendarme officer, Captin Sagan. The story continues as Russia escalates into revolution.

In turn spanning three generations, there's a lot of history to take in with the plot. We have Shashenka at sixteen at the beginning; Shashenka and her family 20 years later, still in turbulent times of communist Russia and under constant threat of persecution for being of aristocratic background; and then the story of a young Russian history graduate in 1994 becoming entangled in the story of Shashenka and her husband and children, in attempt to find out what became of them and whether they might be related to a family history search she has become embroiled in.

With a few slightly unbelievable moments aside, this is an excellent story, and a vivid and emotional portrayal of life in twentieth-century Russia. Only the hardest of hearts could fail to be moved by Shashenka's story and the plight of millions of Russians during times or civil war, revolution, famine, terror and persecution, and I can wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone who enjoys well-researched historical fiction, whatever the era. 4.5* from me, and some more fiction please Simon Montefiore? ( )

Prachtig verhaal over een heel sterke vrouw ten tijde van de Tsaren en het Stalinistische tijdperk. Zeker een aanrader als je houd van historische drama's met veel spanning. ( )

imagine being a 16 year old baroness in 1915, the Russians are at war with germany and your uncle is a
leading Bolshevik...this is the story of the Russian revolution thru her eyes. It is a story I have not read yet, and it is great historical fiction, sadly however, it is not terribly well written. It could have been great, instead, just good. ( )

Reading this book was rather like riding a bicycle with worn out gears. There were long periods when I found myself struggling to engage with the story and stumbling along with no sense of making any progress. Then there would be a sudden whirring and things would click into place for a while, and I would be utterly caught up with it, racing along perfectly happily, until I went over a pothole or hit the kerb too sharply, at which point the bike slipped out of gear again, and I found myself struggling to make headway again.

The book opens in St Petersburg in 1916, and the plot revolves around Sashenka Zeitlin, a young woman raised in a privileged merchant’s family. Unusually for a woman in her position, her maternal uncle is a professional revolutionary, Mendel, who has inspired the young Sashenka to start reading works espousing social justice and even revolution. As a consequence of her dabblings in the remote hinterland of revolutionary thought, Sashenka finds herself being arrested as she leaves her private school, and she is locked up overnight in a squalid detention centre. The book, which is the first volume in a trilogy spanning the twentieth century and beyond, follows her further adventures.

It is certainly well written – Sebag-Montefiore’s prose is very accessible. For some reason, however, I never quite managed to come to grips with theis book, and I will not be moving on to the subsequent volumes. ( )

Kako je jedna nesmotrenost,strast i ljubomora dovela do tragicnog unistenja jedne porodice.U Rusiji u doba Staljinizma izvrsene su cistke nelojalnih gradjana.Sasenjka je bila iz bogataske porodice,ali dokazana pripadnica Partije, supruga istaknutog clana Vanje ali je i pored toga upustila u ljubav sa jednim piscem. Usledila je lavina dogadjaja koja je dovela do njenog utamnicenja, i utamnicenja svih clanova njene porodice, a naposletku i njihove smrti. U vihoru tih desavanja Sasenjka i Vanja su spasili svoje dvoje djece Snjeskicu i Karla, sakrivsi ih daleko od ruke Staljina, ali je to znacilo nj razdvajanje. Sticajem okolnosti njezina unuka je poslije niza istoriskih traganja uspjela da spoji izgubljenu sestru i brata i sazna potresnu istinu.Knjiga se sporo vuce u prvih 250 strana, a poslije se cita u jednom dahu... ( )