Red Princess - A Revolutionary Life
Granta Books 2007
From a privileged childhood in Tsarist St Petersburg to dedicated member of the British Communist party, the life of Princess Sofka Dolgorouky reads like a seismograph of the great upheavals of the twentieth century. In this deeply personal biography, Sofka Zinovieff explores the turbulent, often scandalous life of her grandmother.

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An old Russian diary provides the initial inspiration. Written when Sofka was a beautiful young woman trapped in Nazi-occupied Paris, it turns out to be a series of passionate letters to the great love of her life. It is only after Sofka’s death that her granddaughter reads these pages and decides to dig deeper by following in her grandmother’s footsteps. Zinovieff travels to Sofka’s birthplace, St Petersburg, and to the Crimea, where she fled after the 1917 Revolution. She uncovers hidden MI5 files and returns to the Nazi camp at Vittel, where Sofka was interned and worked with the French Resistance, where she uncovers various secrets.

Even more outrageous in its day than her conversion from princess to communist was Sofka’s private life. She not only believed in sexual freedom, but often placed love, literature and adventure before her children. Sofka’s story is much more than that of a princess in exile. She was someone whose existence was dislocated by revolution yet who believed in revolution as a way of making the world a better place and who produced her own revolutions throughout her life. This affectionate portrait of the 'red princess' by her granddaughter and namesake uses letter, diaries and interviews to recreate a vanished world and also explore the author's own Russian roots.

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"A piercing portrait of an extraordinary woman who was both a Russian princess and a communist…A story of feminine inheritance...”
Ruth Scurr, Daily Telegraph

“Zinovieff writes vibrantly about this hard-drinking, promiscuous, beautiful and scandalous bohemian… there seems to be something poignant - and very often funny - on every other page of the book.”
Shiona Tregaskis,The Observer

"Like a Jew becoming a Nazi, was how her relatives saw it. How could a brainy, sensitive woman, exiled from her homeland by a monstrous totalitarian regime that hounded her class and murdered her friends and relatives, become an unflinching supporter of its creed? That is the puzzling life of the beautiful Sofka Dolgorouky... "
The Economist

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Greece: Η Κόκκινη Πρικγίπισσα. Λιβάνης. www.livanis.gr

Austria & Germany: Die Rote Prinzessin. Zsolnay Verlag & Deuticke. www.deuticke.at

Spain: La Princesa Roja. Alfaguara. www.alfaguara.santillana.es

 

Forthcoming:

USA: Pegasus Books, New York
Turkey: Albatros, Istanbul
Brazil: Distribuidora Record
Poland: Bellona Publishing House
Finland: Tammi Publishers

                                  

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