The Moscow Trilogy

Bestselling author and master storyteller Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping, moving and highly acclaimed novels of love and war, betrayal, espionage and terror - gathered here for the first time in one compelling volume.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of the acclaimed novels of his Moscow Trilogy – Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, which won the Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year Prize and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize: the novels are published in 27 languages. Montefiore is also the author of prize-winning bestselling history books now in 48 languages, including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Jerusalem: The Biography and The Romanovs. 
 
For more information see: www.simonsebagmontefiore.com or follow him on Twitter: @simonmontefiore.

Bestselling author and master storyteller Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping, moving and highly acclaimed novels of love and war, betrayal, espionage and terror - gathered here for the first time in one compelling volume. 
 
Sashenka 
 It is winter 1916 in the tsar’s wartime capital St Petersburg and the beautiful and headstrong Sashenka Zeitlin plays a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, she is a perfect Communist wife and mother who risks everything for a forbidden love affair with a pleasure loving writer which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heartbreaking story of passion, betrayal, and unexpected heroism. 
 
Red Sky at Noon 
 Imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion to fight the invading Nazis and enrols in a cavalry unit of criminals and Cossacks sent on a desperate ride across the sweltering grasslands of southern Russia. Switching between the cruel war and Stalin's secrets in the Kremlin, Benya’s affair with an Italian nurse is the heart of this epic story of passion, bravery and survival where betrayal and death are constant companions, – and love, however fleeting and doomed, offers a glimmer of redemption. 
 
One Night in Winter 
 As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, the teenage children of two of Russia's top leaders are found dead. An investigation begins in their elite school, teenagers and children are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents. The terrifying inquiry soon unveils illicit love affairs and family secrets in a world where the smallest mistakes can be punished by death.

One Night in Winter

By the author of the world-wide bestsellers, Jerusalem, and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and based on a true story, a heart-breaking, addictively readable love story set in Stalin's Russia.

Gripping and cleverly plotted. Doomed love at the heart of a violent society is the heart of Montefiore's One Night in Winter... depicting the Kafkaesque labyrinth into which the victims stumble.

A nail-biting drama ... Montefiore writes brilliantly about love, timeless dilemmas, family devotion, teenage romance and the grand passion of adultery. Readers of Sebastian Faulks and Hilary Mantel will lap this up.

A master storyteller when writing as a historian, Sebag Montefiore’s fiction is just as compelling in this thriller set in Stalin’s Moscow.

A thrilling work of fiction. Montefiore weaves a tight, satisfying plot, delivering surprises to the last page. Stalin's chilling charisma is brilliantly realised. The novel's theme is Love: family love, youthful romance, adulterous passion. One Night in Winter is full of redemptive love and inner freedom.

There were several first-class novels of historical intrigue in 2014; this finely written chronicle of privileged adults and children afraid for their lives in the treacherous upper reaches of Stalin’s Russia in 1945 is in a league of its own.

What happens when you cross Donna Tartt’s The Secret History with one of the scariest times in Russian history? You end up with Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter ... Based in truth, this novel will keep you biting your nails until the very end.

Snuggle up in front of the fire with a glass of red and this captivating story ... a dark enigmatic thriller ... the way he weaves fiction and history is a true gift.

Seriously good fun... the Soviet march on Berlin, nightmarish drinking games at Stalin's countryhouse, the magnificence of the Bolshoi, interrogations, snow, sex and exile... lust adultery and romance. Eminently readable and strangely affecting.

Not just a thumpingly good read, but also essentially a story of human fragility and passions, albeit taking place under the intimidating shadow of a massive Stalinist portico.

Compulsively involving.  Our fear for the children keeps up turning the pages... We follow the passions with sympathy... The knot of events tugs at a wide range of emotions rarely experienced outside an intimate tyranny.

The novel is hugely romantic.   His ease with the setting and historical characters is masterly. The book maintains a tense pace.  Uniquely terrifying. Heartrending.

This tightly written page-turner crackles with authenticity ... if you are wiping away a tear by the end it wont be the thanks to the chill of Soviet winter. Love and death swirl at the heart of One Night in Winter. A terrific storyteller.

Hopelessly romantic and hopelessly  moving. A mix of lovestory thriller and historical fiction. Engrossing.

A novel full of passion, conspiracy, hope, despair, suffering and redemption... transcends the boundaries of genre, being at once thriller and political drama, horror and romance. His ability to paint the tyrannical Stalin in such a way as to make the reader quake with fear is matched by his talent for creating truly heartbreaking characters: the children who innocently find themselves...behind the dank walls of the dreaded Lubyanka prison; their parents, torn between the need to be seen as loyal Bolsheviks and the love they have for their families ... One Night in Winter is a gripping read and must surely be one of the best novels of 2013.

Delicately plotted and buried within a layered, elliptical narrative, One Night in Winter is also a fidgety page-turner which adroitly weaves a huge cast of characters into an arcane world.

Engrossing novel… based on similar real events and certainly his ease with the setting and historical characters is masterly…the invented characters are well-drawn too.

Sebag's new novel draws in the reader and renders time meaningless. Brilliantly depicted.

One Night in Winter entertains and disturbs and seethes with moral complexities: how far would we go to preserve a secret or protect a loved one? All aspects of this “intensified life” are captured in this intricate, at times sobering, but always absorbing novel.

A novel of passion, fear, bravery, suffering and survival ... novel mostly about love ... predictably terrifying — but the novel’s romantic soul tempers the terror and makes for a gripping read ... pitch-perfect.

This gripping novel is a chilling reminder of the darkest days of Communist Russian, and the power one man can wield over a nation’s lives.

A gripping thriller about private life and poetic dreams in Stalin’s Russia… A gripping page-turner… Whether its subject is power or love, a  darkly enjoyable read.

A compelling and uplifting story of love and endurance.

This is one of those rare and thrilling books that you devour hungrily but hope will never end.... If there is one book you must read this year, let it be this one. One Night In Winter is one of the most engaging, gripping and heartbreakingly tragic novels of 2013.

This moving novel from Simon Sebag Montefiore will have you gripped to the end.

This bone-chilling story; with lashings of snow and sec, offers us a vividly engrossing portrait of Soviet Russia.

Simon Sebag Montefiore uses all his deep knowledge of Russia’s history to build a bleak and well- plotted thriller

Mixing real figures with fictional creations is a challenge for any historical novelist, but the vivid cameos here, particularly of Stalin and his dissolute son, Vasily, give this page-turner the grim stamp of authenticity.

One Night in Winter is compulsively involving and readers do not need to bring much previous knowledge of Russian 20th-century history, or the ambience of the time. The author meticulously supplies both.

This is a gripping and cleverly plotted read

This gripping novel – a combination of political thriller, love story and historical fiction – is a chilling reminder of how totalitarian regimes corrupt everything they touch, especially human relationships.

It is an eminently readable tunic-ripper, and strangely affecting.

This is a tale of passion, power and politics that I simply couldn’t put down.

The author draws nuanced people about who the reader cares and villains who repel with their casual disregard for human life. He gives an insight into the machinations of the Stalinist state and provides little details that lift the book out of the ordinary

There aren’t many writers as confident and competent in fiction as in non-fiction but Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of them. A gripping yarn and a good history at the same time.

A political novel captures the nightmarish world of post-World War II Russia. As Stalin twists the Childrens Case to his own ends, the truly magnetic power of ONE NIGHT IN WINTER becomes clear. The stirring of our deepest fears and their unexpected resolution - at this, Montefiore is the master. In the hands of the right author, Stalin, endangered children and Moscow 1945 are enough to make a novel.

Enthralling.Mr Montefiore is masterly at sketching scenes (passionate, melancholy or menacing) and limning characters. Not until the book's epilogue are the ultimate secrets revealed: the calculated or heedless acts of young and old who cast their fates with love.

‘An epic adventure story set against the most awful war in history. Ridiculously good’ Dan Snow 
 
If your children were forced to testify against you, what terrible secrets would they reveal? 
 
Moscow 1945. As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, shots ring out. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl lie dead. 
 
But this is no ordinary tragedy and these are no ordinary teenagers, but the children of Russia’s most important leaders who attend the most exclusive school in Moscow. 
 
Is it murder? A suicide pact? Or a conspiracy against the state? 
 
Directed by Stalin himself, an investigation begins as children are arrested and forced to testify against their friends - and their parents. This terrifying witch-hunt soon unveils illicit love affairs and family secrets in a hidden world where the smallest mistakes will be punished with death.

Sashenka

In the bestselling tradition of Dr Zhivago and Sophie's Choice an epic story of revolution, passion and betrayal - and one woman whose extraordinary secret lies uncovered for half a century.

Intricate, fast moving... by the time I put the book down, long after midnight, I was in tears

If you’re fascinated by twentieth-century Russian history, you’ll be intrigued by the tale of Sashenka, a loyal Communist wife married to a powerful party member, whose life starts to unravel when she embarks upon an affair…The author is a noted historian, and this novel is full of fascinating, meticulously researched detail about Russian life.

To write a good historical novel you have to recreate that world, both physically and intellectually - and there must be a sense that history is driving the plot forwards.  Montefiore succeeds on all counts... The real achievement of this novel is that it describes the profound levels of self-deception required if you wanted to stay alive and be a loyal communist in Stalin's Russia

Agile plotting, vivid characterisation and the exuberant spectacle of a well-informed author enjoying a flourish of serious frivolity - convoluted plot twists, astonishing coincidences, tear-jerking family separations and all - combine to make Sashenka an addictive page-turner with an elegant, steely edge of verisimilitude

A tale rich in conspiracy, seduction, glamour and intrigue that should satisfy all

This epic tale spans almost 100 years of tumultuous Russian history in the mould of Dr Zhivago; its themes of love, lust, treachery, sacrifice and family values dominate the book

A compelling and affecting saga that resonates long after the reading. Montefiore's depiction of the epoch is superb. The language is precise and evocative without getting in the way of the storyline.  Its evocation of 20th Century Russia is so intoxicating it made want to buy a plane ticket and find out more for myself. I can't remember being as moved by the fate of a character in a novel for some time

A must read! Montefiore polishes all the facets of a good story - secrets, lies, betrayal, love and death - and places them in Russia's grand setting

This completely addictive story offers an authoratative insight into Stalin's USSR and, in its huge characters and epic ambition, carries echoes of Tolstoy himself

A heartbreaking tale of passion, betrayal and an unthinkable decision

A compelling novel of passions and secrets, politics and lies, love and betrayal, savagery and survival

Sweeping historical epic about a daring young woman forced to make a hard choice in Stalinist Russia

Excellent... the historical detail is strong. The characterisation is superb, with Sashenka being especially well drawn. With her unwanted beauty and charisma, her gentle nobility that transcends class or wealth and her earnest ideals which eventually cost her so much. Sashenka commands out total sympathy, and when she is forced apart from her children, the sadness is profound and hard to dispel. A powerful novel... with a heroine who lingers in the mind when the story is finished

Sashenka is grand in scale, rich in historical research, and yet never loses the flow of an addictive, racy, well-wrought plot. It combines a moving, satisfyingly just-neat-enough finale with a warning - that history has an awful habit of repeating itself

An epic novel... The suspense lasts until the final pages. There is no let-up. At the end of the book, you really feel that even though Sashenka is a fictional character, she has become one of the thousands of real people who haunt the Moscow archives that Montefiore knows so well

Winter, 1916. In St Petersburg, snow is falling in a country on the brink of revolution. Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her role in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. 
 
Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband and two children. Around her people are disappearing but her own family is safe.But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences. 
 
Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking story of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice ...

Simon Sebag Montefiore

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’ 
 
Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. 
 
He joins the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a desperate mission behind enemy lines. 
 
Switching between Benya's war in the grasslands of Southern Russia, and Stalin's plans in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a journalist also on the Eastern Front, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery and human survival where personal betrayal is a constant companion, and death just a heartbeat away.

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio &amp; deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a deeply satisfying pageturner.

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

In this third volume of The Moscow Trilogy, the fate of combatants and civilians is often harsh. With his feel for vivid and immediate drama and impressive research, the author evokes the extreme turbulence and violence impacting on individuals. Writing with passion, Montefiore makes the point that, up against the huge forces of war, the struggle for personal resolution can be tragic — but never wasted.

The final instalment of Montefiore's loosely connected Moscow Trilogy: amidst the killing and the chaos, a group of prisoners are offered a chance of redemption on a secret mission behind enemy lines on horseback. Montefiore has a keen sense of place and an eye of unexpected details. Switching between the frontline on the Russian steppes and Stalin in the Kremlin, this is an EXCITING FAST-PACED ADVENTURE AND A LAMENT FOR LOVE IN DARK AND BRUTAL TIMES.

I devoured Red Sky at Noon. A heartstopping, heartbreaking, technicolour epic. A grand homage to the Russian masters Babel &amp; Grossman, echoes of Hemingway &amp; Dostoevsky, and a propulsive delight that is entirely Montefiore's own. Gripping storytelling allied with intimate, unsqueamish knowledge of Russian history - a special combination.

This gripping instalment of the Moscow Trilogy tells of a man wrongly imprisoned in the Gulags and his fight for redemption.  Meticulously researched ... In this searing tale of love and war, most moving is the redemptive relationship between a soldier and a nurse that blooms amid the brutality.  An homage to the author's favourite Russian writers and the Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard, such influences pervade this atmospheric tale told in the author's distinct own voice.

A GRIPPING tale ... Montefiore is BRILLIANT at depicting the BROODING MENACE ... the [penal battalions] are given increasingly risky missions, it is Benya's journey on horseback that we follow behind enemy lines in the grasslands of southern Russia ... An EPIC tale ... The language is arresting ... It's beautifully done: a WESTERN ON THE EASTERN FRONT.

DISPATCHES FROM THE DAYS OF BLOOD AND THUNDER ... There are atrocities on all sides and a smidgen of love as Benya falls for a brave Italian nurse. A subplot follows the ill-starred affair between Stalin's daughter and a Jewish writer. But Benya's struggle to keep his humanity is the memorable spine of the book.

Exhilarated and terrified ... Golden is plunged into a world where violent death could arrive at any moment and any pleasures that present themselves (an unexpected affair with an Italian nurse, for example) must be seized immediately. Sebag Montefiore PAINTS HIS VERBAL PICTURES of the WAR IN BOLD PRIMARY COLOURS ... SHEER ENERGY OF STORYTELLING AND GRAND SWEEP OF NARRATIVE.

IT'S LONESOME DOVE MEETS STALINGRAD.  A band of outlaws riding &amp; fighting for their lives on sweeping plains - but these bandits are not battling tribes in the Wild West, they are on the grasslands of south Russia at war with Nazi Germany and its ally, the Italians. Our hero is not a Texas Ranger but a Jewish writer named Benya Golden. Montefiore has brought his understand of Russian history to life here with great gusto traversing Gulags, battlefields and Kremlin but Golden is a lover not a fighter...

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s skill with imagery is such that he immerses his reader in an utterly ethereal landscape … Montefiore can effortlessly meld beauty and battle

For the sheer pleasure of being swept away in an epic tale of love and war by a master storyteller, Red Sky At Noon by Simon Sebag Montefiore had me enthralled from beginning to end. This is the final part of his Moscow trilogy – a series of compelling historical novels in the great tradition of Scott, Thackeray and Tolstoy.

Book of the Year, Sunday Herald (Scotland)

‘An epic adventure story set against the most awful war in history. Ridiculously good’ Dan Snow 
 
'The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’ 
 
Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. 
 
He enrols in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a desperate mission behind enemy lines. 
 
Switching between Benya's war in the grasslands of Southern Russia, and Stalin's plans in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a journalist also on the Eastern Front, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery and human survival where personal betrayal is a constant companion, and death just a heartbeat away. 
 
Praise for Red Sky at Noon 
 
'Red Sky at Noon is an epic adventure story set against the backdrop of the most awful war in human history. The master historian shape-shifting into the brilliant novelist. Ridiculously good’. Dan Snow 
 
'Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio &amp; deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a deeply satisfying pageturner.' - Book of the Month, The Times 
 
'In this third volume of The Moscow Trilogy, the fate of combatants and civilians is often harsh. With his feel for vivid and immediate drama and impressive research, the author evokes the extreme turbulence and violence impacting on individuals. Writing with passion, Montefiore makes the point that, up against the huge forces of war, the struggle for personal resolution can be tragic - but never wasted.' - Daily Mail 
 
'The final instalment of Montefiore's loosely connected Moscow Trilogy: amidst the killing and the chaos, a group of prisoners are offered a chance of redemption on a secret mission behind enemy lines on horseback. Montefiore has a keen sense of place and an eye of unexpected details. Switching between the frontline on the Russian steppes and Stalin in the Kremlin, this is an EXCITING FAST-PACED ADVENTURE AND A LAMENT FOR LOVE IN DARK AND BRUTAL TIMES.' - Mail on Sunday 
 
'I devoured Red Sky at Noon. A heartstopping, heartbreaking, technicolour epic. A grand homage to the Russian masters Babel &amp; Grossman, echoes of Hemingway &amp; Dostoevsky, and a propulsive delight that is entirely Montefiore's own. Gripping storytelling allied with intimate, unsqueamish knowledge of Russian history - a special combination.' - AD Miller, author of Snowdrops 
 
'The gripping final instalment of the Moscow Trilogy tells of a man wrongly imprisoned in the Gulags and his fight for redemption. Love in dark times, meticulously researched... In this searing tale of love and war, most moving is the redemptive relationship between a soldier and a nurse that blooms amid the brutality. An homage to the author's favourite Russian writers and the Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard, such influences pervade this atmospheric tale told in the author's distinct own voice.' - Observer

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Praise for Red Sky at Noon

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a ...

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a ...

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a ...

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

Books by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Series by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Moscow Trilogy

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Praise for Red Sky at Noon

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’ Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a ...

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’ Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a ...

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’ Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a ...

A gripping historical novel with a panoramic sweep

Books by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Series by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Moscow Trilogy

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...

The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire …’

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he d ...