Petrograd

It's the summer of 1916 and the Alexandrov family prepare to embark on their annual holiday, accompanied by an army of staff primed to cater to their needs. Teenage, precocious Alyosha Alexandrov has never known anything but a life of privilege. He spends his days avoiding study and pursuing pretty young maids. But Russia is poised on the brink of epochal political upheaval and within a year Alyosha is separated from family, security, and the innocence of youth. Set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, spanning the turbulent years from 1916 to 1924, Petrograd is a vast, ambitious novel from an award-winning writer. The first in a trilogy, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year Award (Welsh Language), it tells the compelling, convincing story of the Alexandrov family as they each struggle to adapt to the ravages of war and revolution. The novel begins in 1916, as Russia loses the war against the Germans on the Eastern front and follows the fate and fortunes of two branches of a well-to-do family from Saint Petersburg (renamed Petrograd during the First World War). One brother, Fyodor Mikhailovich Alexandrov, is an industrialist, the other, Kozma Mikhailovich, a General in the Tsar's army. The effect of the unfolding events, and the sweeping political and social changes on the family are described from the viewpoint of the brothers' teenage children, Alyosha and his two cousins, Margarita and Larissa