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Reading lists

7 riveting novels on battles for power

Monsieur Ka

An entrancing portrait of love in exile, with a twist.

Goldsworthy is an elegant writer, skilful at building atmosphere. Her fiction-within-fiction device is clever and intriguing ... the novel could hardly seem more of the moment

It often takes an emigre to describe a country most clearly, and Goldsworthy, who was born in Belgrade but has lived in London for 30 years, is proving a most accomplished poet of her adopted city ... A delight

In all three of her books, Goldsworthy has displayed a gift for creating atmosphere ... One of Goldsworthy’s strengths is the sensitivity with which she portrays the many marriages in the book ... Much of the pleasure of reading this remarkable novel comes from its passionate dedication to the power of stories.

In this subtle, intelligent novel, Albertine's narration of events in 1947, as her own story begins to carry reminders of Tolstoy's, proves poignant and effective

A beautiful haunting novel… looking at a familiar London through a frosty, snowy lens. Wonderful

A wonderful novel, entirely original, and entirely absorbing… The atmosphere she creates is exceptional

Goldsworthy enjoys playing with the classics, and she's good at it

Mournful and evocative… It makes for compelling reading.

Vesna Goldsworthy was born in Belgrade in 1961 and has lived in London since 1986. She writes in English, her third language. Her books include an internationally bestselling memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries, and a novel, Gorsky. A former BBC World Service journalist, she is currently professor in creative writing at the University of Exeter and at UEA.

'A beautiful haunting novel… looking at a familiar London through a frosty, snowy lens. Wonderful' Caryl Phillips 
 
The London winter of 1947 is as cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. Albertine, the wife of a British army officer often abroad on covert government business, finds herself increasingly lonely. Eager to distract herself with work, she takes a job as companion to the mysterious 'Monsieur Ka', a Russian émigré. As she is drawn into Ka’s dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations. For in this family of former princes, there are present temptations which could profoundly affect her future.

Gorsky

It was a piece of business that comes along once in a lifetime. If you are lucky. 
 
A captivating tale of big money, Russian beauty and good books.

Evocative, captivating and acutely observed

It’s surprising there haven’t been more novels drawing on London’s fascination with Russian oligarchs. But how to write about them without it all seeming a bit Jackie Collins? Vesna Goldsworthy has hit on the perfect solution with her witty novel Gorsky

This is the most enjoyable fiction I’ve come across this year. Gorsky is engaging and, best of all…manages to cast London in a new and softer light. I defy anyone who revelled in Fitzgerald’s original not to have fun with Goldsworthy’s attempt to transpose arguably the greatest American novel back to the old world

Written with such narrative elegance that you’re led irresistibly on, as with some exquisite dish, from one perfect melting mouthful to the next

Entertaining and poignant, ironic and serious, Gorsky is both a literary homage and the work of a highly original imagination. Goldsworthy is brilliant on money, clothes. romantic love and decadent sex -- and on various kinds of immigrant species. A jeu d'esprit with a heart and mind.

Here, at last, is the ‘Gatsby’ for today’s London – the holy city of the Russian super-rich. In a marvellously written, wickedly imagined novel, sometimes hauntingly sad and sometimes very funny, Vesna Goldsworthy evokes the loneliness which goes with sudden and gigantic wealth, as it falls upon men and women with no previous background of  privilege. ‘Gorsky’  provides a crowded satire on the mob of hangers-on who follow the billionaires, and a clear-eyed panorama of Kensington and Chelsea as new money floods over old dignity.

The spell-binding story of a Russian billionaire setting up home in London's 'Chelski'. With wit and poetic verve, Vesna Goldsworthy explores our fascination with money, glamour, parties and sex and, ultimately, offers a haunting elegy to love

There’s no mistaking F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as the inspiration behind Vesna Goldsworthy’s glittering, glamorous novel

It’s a clever, telling story asking questions about love, power, beauty and books. Where better to find love than among the shelves of a dusty bookshop?

Her sharp observation of London’s super-rich...is an unexpected and elegant bonus in this retelling of a classic story

Its charm lies in its literary and historical adornments

I was swept up in the characters and the setting of this brilliant book and hope that it will become a classic

An eternal, melancholy story which never fails to tug at the heartstrings

Goldsworthy’s mischievous debut updates that constant trope about gaining the world and losing your soul in a contemporary London setting that is two parts Bulgakov to one part Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 
 
'Captivating' Sunday Times 
 
'Glittering' Sunday Express 
 
London dances to the tune of Gorsky’s billions.The most enigmatic of oligarchs, Gorsky desires and gets the best of everything and now he has his sights set on Natalia. That she is already married is an inconvenient detail. 
 
Nick works in a shabby-chic bookshop. When Gorsky approaches him with the commission of a lifetime, Nick suddenly gains access to the world of the wealthy and the beautiful. But this privilege comes at a price and Nick finds his new life suddenly fraught with danger...

Vesna Goldsworthy

A poignant, bittersweet love story played out across the east-west divide, it challenges set ideas about loyalty, freedom and ideology

Superb... The divided continent has been at the heart of countless novels over the decades, but few can have been as cleverly crafted or better told than Vesna Goldsworthy's Iron Curtain... Brilliantly written

The pages fly by, and Goldsworthy's careful scrutiny brings warmth and sympathy to her tale of belonging and betrayal. Tense, brooding and often hilarious, Iron Curtain finds bright sparks as well as bleakness in the cold war's dying embers

Vesna Goldsworthy's masterly novel retains the grace and resilience of literary art while wading deep into the most riveting human drama... Goldsworthy is at once the most impartial and the tenderest of observers, a bold dramatist and a subtle humorist

Original and memorable... a profound understanding of the timeless realities of love, betrayal and the desire for revenge

Timely... Daring... A bittersweet tale of loyalty, love and the siren call of freedom

Iron Curtain seized me from its first page and I hardly put it down again until I arrived with reluctance to its stunning conclusion... Moving but also irresistibly enjoyable

An extraordinary evocation of two wildly contrasted worlds... Vesna Goldsworthy writes so well!

This excellent novel is a comedy of manners nevertheless fraught with tension... Goldsworthy captures the human perspective of life in the cold war superbly and sympathetically

A pacy rite-of-passage story that doubles as a portrait of the poisonous legacies of police-state paranoia

Gripping... With grace and a dose of forgiveness, Goldsworthy performs a heartbreaking but exhilarating evisceration of the myths by which we live now

Goldsworthy's crisply observed and entertaining novel has serious overtones and poses uncomfortable questions, not least about the supposed superiority of the West

A love story that begins in the East and moves to the West. It serves as a timely reminder that the European states once dominated by Soviet ideology were a patchwork of cultures with their own individual histories

It would be possible to read library stacks' worth of books about what life on the eastern side of the curtain was like, trying to understand the feeling of the late Soviet Union... Or you could read this book

Beautifully crafted... Goldsworthy's evocative descriptions of both worlds - the rigid ice of the east and the damp monotony of the west - lend a filmic quality to this layered novel

Goldsworthy's perceptive and well-crafted story plays like The Americans as revised by Sally Rooney, with acidic observations worthy of the late Kingsley Amis. By flipping the Cold War script, Goldsworthy comes up with a winner.

Witty, poignant and full of surprises - every detail of this cross-cultural story of love and disillusionment rings true.

An unflinching brilliant novel about the mental divide between East and West in Europe in the Cold War era.

A Love Story

'A piercingly evocative East-West love story' The Times 
 
 
This is a story of East and West. A story of love, betrayal, and lost illusions... 
 
The end of the Cold War seems unimaginable for Milena, a Red Princess trapped in a lifetime of limitless luxury. 
 
Yet when she meets Jason, a confident British poet, it's not long before she's secretly planning her escape to Britain. 
 
1980s London defies her privileged expectations. And when she discovers Jason's concept of freedom confronts her deepest-held beliefs, the very ideas of family and state come into question... 
 
 
'A wonderful, perfectly-pitched novel: full of delightful intrigue and wry insight about the human predicament and its unique tensions' William Boyd 
 
'Witty, poignant and full of surprises - every detail of this cross-cultural story of love and disillusionment rings true' Clare Chambers

Iron Curtain

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Vesna Goldsworthy

Praise for Iron Curtain

A poignant, bittersweet love story played out across the east-west divide, it challenges set ideas about loyalty, freedom and ideology

Superb... The divided continent has been at the heart of countless novels over the decades, but few can have been as cleverly crafted or better told than Vesna Goldsworthy's Iron Curtain... Brilliantly wri ...

The pages fly by, and Goldsworthy's careful scrutiny brings warmth and sympathy to her tale of belonging and betrayal. Tense, brooding and often hilarious, Iron Curtain finds bright sparks as well as bleak ...

A poignant, bittersweet love story played out across the east-west divide, it challenges set ideas about loyalty, freedom and ideology

Superb... The divided continent has been at the heart of countless novels over the decades, but few can have been as cleverly crafted or better told than Vesna Goldsworthy's Iron Curtain... Brilliantly wri ...

The pages fly by, and Goldsworthy's careful scrutiny brings warmth and sympathy to her tale of belonging and betrayal. Tense, brooding and often hilarious, Iron Curtain finds bright sparks as well as bleak ...

A poignant, bittersweet love story played out across the east-west divide, it challenges set ideas about loyalty, freedom and ideology

Superb... The divided continent has been at the heart of countless novels over the decades, but few can have been as cleverly crafted or better told than Vesna Goldsworthy's Iron Curtain... Brilliantly wri ...

The pages fly by, and Goldsworthy's careful scrutiny brings warmth and sympathy to her tale of belonging and betrayal. Tense, brooding and often hilarious, Iron Curtain finds bright sparks as well as bleak ...

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7 riveting novels on battles for power

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