Other Cast

Eton's mother, Vera, descends from two of the oldest names in Russia, both of which met, by chance of marriage, in her own parents — and neither name was supposed to survive the century.

Her father's line runs back to Prince Sergei Volkonsky, one of the young aristocrat-officers who rose against the tsar in the Decembrist revolt of December 1825: a few hours of confusion on a Petersburg square that ended in gunfire, then in exile. The leaders were hanged; the rest, stripped of … Continue reading about Eton Volkonsky

Lara Novikova belongs to a class the Soviet system wasn't supposed to have, and never officially admitted to: the nomenklatura, the children and spouses of Party and ministerial officials who lived a visibly different life from everyone around them — better apartments, foreign goods, travel clearances, doors that opened because of whose daughter you were rather than anything you'd done yourself. Her father, a Deputy Minister of Culture at the beginning of the novel, has given her exactly that kind of life. … Continue reading about Lara Novikova