From Netgalley in exchange for a review

This is set in the USSR, predominately in 1945 in the months after the end of WWII. The USSR is jubilant, having been on the winning side against Germany and the Nazis. However, on an individual level, people have already learnt the double-think of the state under Lenin and now Stalin and know that they can be betrayed by even their closest family members.

See the rest of my review here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/book-review-one-night-in-winter-by-simon...

Good. I also enjoyed his popular history of Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar. ( )

This novel is very compelling and I was somewhat horrified by the historical note at the end which discussed the actual historical events this novel draws on. Set amidst the Soviet elite, this story opens with the murder-suicide of two teens, both children of high-ranking officials in Moscow. As the story progresses, arrests and conspiracies compound as what begins as a playful, satirical exercise morphs into multiple arrests and corruption at the high levels of the Soviet state. The author has done his research and presents a compelling and disturbing picture of Soviet life. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this time and place. ( )

A gripping story of conspiracy and love. My favourite book of 2013. ( )

As befits an historian of the quality of Simon Sebag Montefiore this novel evokes the world of the upper echelons of Stalin's Russia extremely well. We see the privileged lives of Politburo members and their families - expensive homes, servants, chauffeurs, clothes and general plenty (including food). We also see the twists and turns in a fantastical society where political power is vested in the hands of a single man and where that man is as driven by rumour, superstition, jealousy, fear and partiality as any other.

Even if the ending does have some uplift to it, this is a downbeat novel (don't look for jokes, there aren't any). The destruction of peoples' lives based on nothing but a whim and using their own children to shape and deliver that destruction does not make for edifying reading. The section of the book dealing with the interrogation of the children was too long and too repetitive.

This has to much historical and not quite enough fiction, for me. ( )