Sashenka
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. 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 heart-breaking tale of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism – and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
It is a novel about love in the times of great changes and great tragedies in the Soviet Union. A depiction of mechanisms of power in Stalin’s Russia that destroyed imaginary enemies by destroying real-life people. A story about times that have to be remembered and described in order to be avoided in the future.