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“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.”
— Mail on Sunday (London)
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“Snuggle up in front of the fire with a glass of red and this
captivating story. A dark enigmatic thriller…The way [Montefiore]
weaves fiction and history is a true gift.”
— Marie Claire (London)
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“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.”
— Sunday Times (London)
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“This tightly written page-turner crackles with authenticity and if you
are wiping away a tear by the end it won’t be the icy chill of the
Soviet winter that’s to blame.”
— Daily Express (London)
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“Seriously good fun…the Soviet march on Berlin, nightmarish drinking
games at Stalin’s country house, the magnificence of the Bolshoi,
interrogations, snow, sex and exile…lust, adultery, and romance.
Eminently readable and strangely affecting.”
— Sunday Telegraph (London)
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“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.”
— Times (London)
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“Thrilling…One Night in Winter is full of redemptive love and inner freedom.”
— London Evening Standard
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“A mix of thriller, love story, and historical fiction…Montefiore’s knowledge of the period helps him bring 1945 Moscow to
bleak, fascinating life.”
— Observer (London)
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“A gripping
thriller about private life and poetic dreams in Stalin’s Russia…A darkly enjoyable
read.”
— Guardian (London)
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“A compelling read.”
— Independent (London)
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“A novel of passion, fear, bravery, suffering and survival…Its success
is helped by Montefiore’s pitch-perfect reconstruction of the golden
tightrope that Moscow’s elite walked under Stalin.”
— Spectator (London)
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“Delicately plotted and buried within a layered, elliptical narrative, One Night in Winter is also a…page-turner which adroitly weaves a huge cast of characters into an arcane world.”
— Time Out (London)
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“In this engrossing novel, the setting is the USSR shortly after the end
of the Second World War…As Simon Sebag Montefiore explains in an
afterword, this is based on similar real events, and certainly his ease
with the setting and certain historical characters is masterly.”
— Scotsman (Edinburgh)
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“Sebag’s new novel draws in the reader and renders time meaningless. Brilliantly depicted.”
— Jewish Chronicle (London)
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“Not just a thumpingly good read, but also essentially a story of human fragility and passions.”
— National (Abu Dhabi)
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“From the first pages of this gripping novel, Montefiore captures the very essence of the fear created by Stalin’s regime. His characters are very real teenagers caught in political games they cannot fathom and terrors so deep that they and their families cannot escape prosecution. As thought provoking as it is historically accurate, Montefiore’s foray into Soviet politics is fascinating.”
— RT Book Reviews (4½ stars)
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“Sudden, mysterious arrests. Brutal
interrogations. The crushing of any hint of antigovernment thought.
Constant, stomach-churning terror. Such is the reality of Stalinist
Russia evoked so convincingly by Montefiore.…A gripping, fast-moving tale of love, fear, sacrifice, and survival.”
— Booklist
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“British historian Montefiore turns in his second novel, a foreboding tale of Soviet Russia based on actual events…The characters…are strong and believable, all careening
toward a fateful day…Speak[s] to much that’s dark in the human soul—but to what can redeem it, too.”
— Kirkus Reviews