The sort of big sweeping saga you can really lose yourself in. I recommend it to both genders and any age. It’s just fab as his The Sons of Adam (oil industry) and Glory Boys (flying and early Hollywood) are. He is a good, old-fashioned storyteller with a beginning, a middle and an end, where you are drawn in and keep stealing time to return to. I love him. Spanning thirty years from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall, rich in incident and drama, it is a truly glorious read.
Misha is an aristocratic young officer in the army when the Russian revolution sweeps away all his certainties. Tonya is a nurse from an impoverished family in St Petersburg. They should have been bitter enemies; and yet they fall passionately in love. It cannot last, and Misha must flee the country as Tonya faces arrest and possibly death.
Thirty years later, Misha has survived the War and seeks to rebuild his life in the destroyed city of Berlin. Drawn into spying for the British, he learns of a talented female agent from the Soviet quarter. Can it be his lost love? And how will they find each other, as the divide deepens between East and West?
Intensely dramatic, epic in scope, this is a glorious novel of courage, action and ultimately undying hope.
‘An epic love story that stays with you long after you've finished reading it. It has all the hallmarks of a classic - tragedy, history, hope and thwarted lovers. A haunting, but ultimately uplifting tale.’ Prima
Author
About Harry Bingham
Harry Bingham is a successful author as well as running The Writers' Workshop, an editorial consultancy for first-time writers, and organising the York Festival of Writing. He lives near Oxford.
