Ball gowns and Bolsheviks

The heroine and narrator of the story is Eugénie (Genia) , born in 1897 into a noble family in the Russia of the last tsar. She describes the lavish parties and entertainment during the winter seasons in St. Petersburg and the long, lazy summers on the family estate in Samara. This compelling novel brims with entrancing detail: the first ball gown, courtship, etiquette, the tango craze, sleigh rides, boat trips on the Volga and holidays in the Crimea. It’s like glancing through an old photograph album, evoking a bygone era and a vanished world. Talk during sumptuous dinners with aristocratic friends and family turns to political and social issues, such as the growing unrest, the desirability of radical reforms, Rasputin and other court intrigues. Meanwhile, the modern age advances with electric light, the gramophone and the telephone, with cars superseding coaches. World War II, the Russian revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty put an end to the privileged existence of the nobility. After the communist takeover of power, Génia finds herself in prison, where Lenin's secret police attempt, unsuccessfully, to recruit her as an informant. On her release, she decides to flee the country via Siberia with her lover, leaving her homeland forever. This autobiographical novel is based on the life of Eugénie Usakovskaya (1897-1997), a member of a prominent Russian noble family, who fled to Shanghai after the 1917 revolution. It has been edited and translated by Janine Jager, historian and author of the much-praised biography, Wilhelmina Triesman: een Nederlandse in Leningrad [Wilhelmina Triesman: A Dutchwoman in Leningrad] (2012), and translated into English by Rosalind Buck.