I began reading Russian writers - Tolstoy, Pasternak, Dostoyevsky, Chekov etc etc - when I was a teenager.  Well, I read them in English ... 

Some years ago I began working on a novel set in  Stalin's Russia - in the Soviet Union - about Stalin's persecution of intellectuals.

I told the story of the intellectuals' persecution in the words of a young, pretty girl - Tanya - who falls in love with a married dissident poet - Beretzkoy. 

By telling the story of their love she also tells of the suffering of the Russian people because of Stalin's policies and his GULAG.

It took me long to finish the writing of this novel - For the Love of a Poet - because I was working as a journalist, and I was writing another two books too. One - Die in Paris - a true-crime and the story of Dr Marcel Petiot, the French WW2 serial killer - was published in February 2013, and the other, a novel - Bella ... A French Life - was published in December 2013. (You can read about both those books here on Authorsden.com.

I am excited about the publication of For the Love of a Poet and I am sure that you will like the novel.

(Do note that the photo is not of the cover of the novel: my publisher is still busy designing the cover.)