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Monsieur Ka

Monsieur Ka

Summary

'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.

Reviews

  • 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
    Rose Wild, The Times

About the author

Vesna Goldsworthy

Vesna Goldsworthy comes from Belgrade. She began her writing life as a poet and aged 22 performed her poetry to thirty thousand people at a football stadium. At 24 she moved to the UK and started writing in English, her third language. Her widely-translated books include a prize-winning poetry collection The Angel of Salonika; an internationally bestselling memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries; and the London-based novels Gorsky and Monsieur Ka. A former BBC World Service journalist, she is now an academic and occasional broadcaster.
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