SOFKA ZINOVIEFF

Personal biografía de la Princesa Zinovieff, escrita por la nieta de la protagonista. Nacida en la corte zarista de San Petersburgo, nada presagiaba que la Princesa Zinovieff acabaría militando en el Partido Comunista britanico. Su agitada trayectoria vital es una radiografia de las turbulencias que agitaron el siglo XX: vivio la Revolucion Rusa, las dos grandes Guerras Mundiales, los campos de concentracion nazi y la lucha por la supervivencia de los prisioneros judios, a quienes ayudo poniendo en peligro su propia vida.Zinovieff dibuja un vivo e intenso retrato Una vida de excentricidades y excesos, de perdidas y exilio, de coraje La Princesa Roja es un pequeño monumento conmemorativo a todas aquellas vidas desplazadas por la corriente de la historia moderna. Un maravilloso relato. THE GUARDIAN

In 1907 Princess Sophy (''Sofka'') Dolgorouky was born in St Petersburg. Members of the Imperial family had attended her parents'' wedding earlier that same year, and the child was born into a privileged world of nurses, private tutors and elegant tea parties. The Russian Revolution caused the princess to flee across Europe to England, but it was the Second World War that left the deepest marks on her adult life. During those years, she left her first husband and lost her second. Later, she was interned in a Nazi prison camp, where she discovered Communism and showed great bravery in defending the rights of the Jewish prisoners. It was her Communism which took her back to the Soviet Union as an improbable tour guide for British workers. And Communism, albeit indirectly, brought her the last love of her life, Jack, a working-class Londoner who had never been abroad. Sofka''s colourful life also included a close friendship with Laurence Olivier, innumerable lovers, some serious, some quickly discarded, and an abiding love of reading and especially poetry. This affectionate portrait of the ''red princess'' by her granddaughter and namesake uses letters, diaries and interviews to recreate a vanished world and also explore the author''s own Russian roots.

A bold, thought-provoking novel that will compel and disquiet in equal measure, about the moral lines we tread, the stories we tell ourselves and the secrets we bury; ''''the best novel of 2018, by far'''' (Cressida Connolly, Spectator)A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 - CHOSEN BY THE OBSERVER, NEW STATESMAN ANDSPECTATOR1970s London. Ralph, an up-and-coming composer, has gone to visit Edmund Greenslay in his riverside home. At the heart of the house''''s wild bliss he finds Edmund''''s nine-year-old daughter Daphne, flitting, sprite-like, through the house''''s colourful rooms and unruly garden. From the moment their lives collide Ralph is consumed by an obsession to make Daphne his.Decades later, Daphne watches her own daughter come of age and is confronted with the truth of her own childhood - and a devastating act of violence that has lain hidden for decades.

Athens, 1942 two sisters divided by politics and tragedy... In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years in exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in prison, and whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby. Nikitas had been distressed in the days before his death and, curious to find out why, his English widow Maud starts to investigate his complicated past. In so doing, she finds herself reigniting a bitter family feud, discovering a heartbreaking story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War and forced to make a terrible decision that would blight not only her life but that of future generations...The House on Paradise Street is an epic tale of love and loss, which takes readers from the war-torn streets of Nazi-occupied Athens through the military junta years and on into the troubled city of recent times and shows what happens when ideology threatens to subsume our sense of humanity.

Sofka Zinovieff had fallen in love with Greece as a student, but little suspected that years later she would, return for good with an expatriate Greek husband and two young daughters. This book is a wonderfully fresh, funny, and inquiring account of her first year as an Athenian. The whole family have to come to grips with their new life and identities--the children start school and tackle a new language, and Sofka's husband, Vassilis, comes home after half a lifetime away. Meanwhile, Sofka resolves to get to know her new city and become a Greek citizen, which turns out to be a process of Byzantine complexity. As the months go by, Sofka's discovers how memories of Athens' past haunt its present in its music, poetry, and history. She also learns about the difficult art of catching a taxi, the importance of smoking, the unimportance of time-keeping, and how to get your Christmas piglet cooked at the baker's.

''We gazed transfixed across the small, strangely tropical bay at the bottom of the hill, and the surrounding palm trees and sandy beaches. Beyond the bay was the wide expanse of the Saronic Gulf, with its distant traffic of boats leaving for the islands and returning to the port at Piraeus.'' This was Sofka Zinovieff''s first sight of the view from Eurydice Street. It was so irresistible that she and her husband immediately knew that they would make their home there. Sofka had fallen in love with Greece as a student, but little suspected that years later she would return for good with an expatriate Greek husband and two young daughters. This book is a wonderfully fresh, funny, and inquiring account of her first year as an Athenian. The whole family have to get to grips with their new life and identities: the children start school and tackle a new language, and Sofka''s husband, Vassilis, comes home after half a lifetime away. Meanwhile, Sofka resolves to get to know her new city and become a Greek citizen, which turns out to be a process of Byzantine complexity. As the months go by, Sofka''s discovers how memories of Athens'' past haunt its present in its music, poetry, and history. She also learns about the difficult art of catching a taxi, the importance of smoking, the unimportance of time-keeping, and how to get your Christmas piglet cooked at the baker''s.

"We gazed transfixed across the small, strangely tropical bay at the bottom of the hill, and the surrounding palm trees and sandy beaches. Beyond the bay was the wide expanse of the Saronic Gulf, with its distant traffic of boats leaving for the islands and returning to the port at Piraeus". This was Sofka Zinovieff''s first sight of the view from Eurydice Street. It was so irresistible that she and her husband immediately knew that they would make their home there. Sofka had fallen in love with Greece as a student, but little suspected that years later she would return for good with an expatriate Greek husband and two young daughters. This book is a fresh, funny and inquiring account of her first year as an Athenian. The whole family have to get to grips with their new life and identities: the children start school and tackle a new language, and Sofka''s husband, Vassilis, comes home after half a lifetime away. Meanwhile, Sofka resolves to get to know her new city and become a Greek citizen, which turns out to be a process of Byzantine complexity. As the months go by, Sofka''s discovers how memories of Athens'' past haunt its present in its music, poetry and history.She also learns about the difficult art of catching a taxi, the importance of smoking, the unimportance of time-keeping, and how to get your Christmas piglet cooked at the baker''s.

Faringdon House in Oxfordshire was the home of Lord Berners, composer, writer, painter, friend of Stravinsky and Gertrude Stein, a man renowned for his eccentricity masks, practical jokes, a flock of multi-coloured doves and his homosexuality. Before the war he made Faringdon an aesthetes paradise, where exquisite food was served to many of the great minds, beauties and wits of the day. Since the early thirties his companion there was Robert Heber-Percy, twenty-eight years his junior, wildly physical, unscholarly, a hothead who rode naked through the grounds, loved cocktails and nightclubs, and was known to all as the Mad Boy. If the two men made an unlikely couple, at a time when homosexuality was illegal, the addition to the household in 1942 of a pregnant Jennifer Fry, a high society girl known to be fast, as Roberts wife was simply astounding.After Victoria was born the marriage soon foundered (Jennifer later married Alan Ross). Berners died in 1950, leaving Robert in charge of Faringdon, aided by a ferocious Austrian housekeeper who strove to keep the same culinary standards in a more austere age. This was the world Sofka Zinovieff, Victorias daughter, a typical child of the sixties, first encountered at the age of seventeen. Eight years later, to her astonishment, Robert told her he was leaving her Faringdon House.Her book about Faringdon and its people is marvellously witty and full of insight, bringing to life a vanished world and the almost fantastical people who lived in it.

Funny, sad and beautifully writtenTelegraphI was completely absorbed from the beginningMary PortasA brilliant depiction of a complex sprawling family with a charismatic lovable rogue at its centre. It is both tragic and funny, but ultimately heartwarmingLily DunnWhat do you do when youre not allowed to attend your fathers funeral? This is the question facing Alekoss far-flung children from many marriages when the successful, if controversial, Greek sculptor dies in London. His last wife and now widow is determined that they stay away, but for the first time, all the sisters and brothers meet up and plan to take matters into their own hands.Wonderfully written and sharply funny, Stealing Dad tells the unlikely story of a dysfunctional family coming together in tragic yet hilarious ways, from acclaimed author of Putney, Sofka Zinovieff.