Red Princess - Softcover

Sofka Zinovieff

3.74

196 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862079927 ISBN 13: 9781862079922

Publisher: Granta Books, 2008

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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.

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About the Author:

Sofka Zinovieff was born in England and is of Russian extraction. She studied anthropology at Cambridge; then, after spells living in Russia and Italy, she settled with her family in Greece, an experience which she described in her first, highly acclaimed book, Eurydice Street (Granta, 2003), which has been translated into three languages.

From Publishers Weekly:

No Hollywood fantasy is more exciting than this true story of a Russian princess in exile who becomes a bohemian, free lover and Communist. WWII was a turning point for the woman who had traveled Europe, married and divorced and borne three children (possibly with different fathers). In 1940, while in France, Sofka was detained in a German camp, developed Resistance contacts and aided Jewish inmates. Soon after the war, in England, she joined the Communist Party, eventually led tours of the Soviet Union, but ended her itinerant life in England. Written by Sofka's granddaughter and based on her published memoir, an unpublished diary kept during the war and voluminous new research, the power of this biography is in its historical breadth as well as Zinovieff's ability to conjure the specificity of time and place through Sofka's experiences of the 20th century's major political and culture events. At times a focus on Zinovieff's biographical detective work slightly slows the pace, but overall, this is a notable story told with elan and an eye for historical and social detail. Photos, map. (Nov.)
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