A poignant love story set in Stalin's Russia, against the backdrop of World War II. The heroes are Alexander and Tatiana. He is a young Red Army officer, handsome, brave, generous, self-confident; the voice has a strange accent, behind which lurks a mysterious past. She is a Russian girl who lives in Leningrad in the same room with parents, paternal grandparents, Pasha and his twin sister Dasha. It's pretty, funny, smart, courageous and still retains a childlike spirit. Tatiana and Alexander met in June 1941, the day when Hitler's Germany declares war on Russia. Output to stock up on food, Tatiana sits on a bench eating an ice cream bought at the kiosk next to the tram stop. Suddenly he realizes that the other side of the street a soldier is watching: is Alexander. The young man is struck by the lovely girl, wrapped in a white dress with red roses embroidered on, enjoying a gelato in the entire light-heartedness of his seventeen years, while the world collapses around her in the anguish of war. Tatiana's looks like a light in the darkness, a hope in desolation. Among them immediately triggered an irresistible attraction, through an intersection of gazes understand to be meant for each other. Alexander crosses the road and speak to Tatiana. From that moment on their history. Since the beginning of the obstacles that present themselves seem to want to make their love impossible. Will be forced to ignore it for days and months, will face the Nazi siege and the hard Russian winter, will have to overcome fear death and the pain of separation before they can give freely to the passion - so long repressed - and crown their dream of love. A Lazar (an imaginary village, created by fantasy author), away from conflict and suffering, surrounded by unspoilt countryside and away from the cruel world, Tatiana and Alexander will live for a short period of time, moments of intense happiness and deep tenderness . And then back into the nightmare of the war ... The finish is not a real ending, only a goodbye - painful as it is hopeful - because the story of two lovers continued in the second book Tatiana & Alexander , And ends in the third The summer garden.
A novel seven hundred pages that we read in one breath. A wrenching story that moves the reader from the beginning. The characters are well delineated, the dialogues are never trivial, never predictable, the style is simple and smooth language used to describe the numerous sexual relations between the two protagonists is explicit and erotic, but careful never to fall into the vulgarity of pornography . Paullina Simons is proving a formidable writer, can give you unique emotions, great connoisseur of Russian literature, history, war. Between the lines of this work, which became a bestseller internationally, there is also a subtle denunciation of hypocrisy and cruelty of the Stalinist regime. But Knight winter speaks above all hope: hope that has its epicenter in love and that helps to overcome difficulties, to fight for a better future, to rise from the ashes of suffering, to defeat death.
We are facing an extraordinary novel, a passionate love as dramatic as the war. Epic.
Paullina Simons (pictured right) was born in St. Petersburg in 1963. At ten he emigrated with his family in the USA. After graduating in political science at the University of Kansas, and after working as a financial journalist, wrote his first novel Tully, fulfilling his dream: becoming a writer. Gained worldwide fame with a trilogy of novels Knight winter , Tatiana & Alexander and The summer garden , whose stories are largely inspired by the story of her family in Russia. Apart from other novels, also wrote a cookbook: Tatiana's table. He lives in Northport, near New York, with her husband and her four children. Paullina Handler is her maiden name. RATING: 5 / 5
Title: Knight winter
Original title: The bronze horseman
Author: Paullina Simons
Translator: Fochi Lucia and Francesca Del Moro
Publisher: BUR Rizzoli (fiction series)
Year: 2010
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