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qatsiBook Review: The Winter Palace, by Eva Stachniak
I picked this up as a curiosity last summer from the work book-swap shelf. The central character is Barbara (or, Russified, Varvara), the teenage daughter of a Polish bookbinder in St Petersburg, who is orphaned and taken in to the Imperial Palace and becomes a spy for the Chancellor. During this time she befriends the visiting Saxon princess who will become Catherine the Great, and the story is that of Catherine's early years during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, who very much gets to play the part of the wicked queen here, through to her own rise to the throne. A multitude of intrigues and alliances are conveyed, which goes some way to demonstrating a long history of court espionage and misinformation in Russia; arguably, an ongoing tradition. It's a dark tale, well written and well paced, with a variety of incidents, drama, tragedy, and plot twists.
I picked this up as a curiosity last summer from the work book-swap shelf. The central character is Barbara (or, Russified, Varvara), the teenage daughter of a Polish bookbinder in St Petersburg, who is orphaned and taken in to the Imperial Palace and becomes a spy for the Chancellor. During this time she befriends the visiting Saxon princess who will become Catherine the Great, and the story is that of Catherine's early years during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, who very much gets to play the part of the wicked queen here, through to her own rise to the throne. A multitude of intrigues and alliances are conveyed, which goes some way to demonstrating a long history of court espionage and misinformation in Russia; arguably, an ongoing tradition. It's a dark tale, well written and well paced, with a variety of incidents, drama, tragedy, and plot twists.