Sofka Zinovieff

In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man twenty years her senior. A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s beautiful activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his nine-year old daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse. Ralph showers Daphne with tokens of his affection—clandestine gifts and secret notes. In a home that is exciting but often lonely, Daphne finds Ralph to be a dazzling companion. Their bond remains strong even after Ralph becomes a husband and father, and though Ralph worships Daphne, he does not touch her. But in the summer of 1976, when Ralph accompanies thirteen-year-old Daphne alone to meet her parents in Greece, their relationship intensifies irrevocably. One person knows of their passionate trysts: Daphne’s best friend Jane, whose awe of the intoxicating Greenslay family ensures her silence. Forty years later Daphne is back in London. After years lost to decadence and drug abuse, she is struggling to create a normal, stable life for herself and her adolescent daughter. When circumstances bring her back in touch with her long-lost friend, Jane, their reunion inevitably turns to Ralph, now a world-famous musician also living in the city. Daphne’s recollections of her childhood and her growing anxiety over her own young daughter eventually lead to an explosive realization that propels her to confront Ralph and their years spent together. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints—victim, perpetrator, and witness—Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.

A Novel

Putney

"In the 1980s, a young English woman went to Greece as a student and fell in love with the country. In the summer of 2001, married to an expatriate Greek and the mother of two young daughters, she returned for good." "Eurydice Street chronicles the first year of her new life, in pursuit of the contradictory character of Athens and its people, and takes its shape from the seasons and celebrations of the Greek year. Resolutely urban and unsentimental, it is the story of making a home in one of the most visited but least understood European cities. Zinovieff pursues her dream of 'becoming Greek', of belonging officially in spite of the tangle of red tape to be negotiated. She watches her children becoming Greek too, and her husband returning to his roots after half a lifetime away."--BOOK JACKET.

A Place in Athens

Eurydice Street

In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in prison, and whom she had not seen since she left him as a baby. His English widow is curious to find out why Nikitas was so distressed in the days before his death, and in the process reignites a bitter family feud. And uncovers the heartbreaking story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War and forced to make a terrible decision that will effect the lives of future generations.

The House on Paradise Street

Like The Bolter and Portrait of a Marriage, this beguiling, heady tale of a scandalous ménage à trois among England's upper classes combines memoir and biography to re-create an unforgettably decadent world. Among the glittering stars of British society, Sofka Zinovieff's grandparents lived and loved with abandon. Robert Heber-Percy was a dashing young man who would rather have a drink than open a book, so his involvement with Jennifer Fry, a gorgeous socialite famous for her style and charm, was not surprising. But by the time Robert met and married Jennifer, he had already been involved with a man—Gerald, Lord Berners—for more than a decade. Stout, eccentric and significantly older, Gerald was a composer, writer and aesthete—a creative aristocrat most at home in the company of the era's best and brightest minds. He also owned one of Britain's loveliest stately homes, Faringdon House, in Oxfordshire, which under his stewardship became a beacon of sybaritic beauty. Robert and Gerald made an unlikely couple, especially because they lived together at Faringdon House when homosexuality was illegal. And then a pregnant Jennifer moved into Faringdon in 1942, creating a formidable ménage à trois. In this gorgeous, entertaining narrative of bohemian aristocracy, Sofka Zinovieff probes the mysteries of her grandparents and the third man in their marriage: Gerald, the complex and talented heir to a legendary house, its walls lined with priceless art and its gardens roamed by a bevy of doves, where he entertained everyone from Igor Stravinsky to Gertrude Stein. What brought Robert and Jennifer together under his roof, and why did Jennifer stay—and marry Robert? Blending memoir and biography in her quest to lay old ghosts to rest, Zinovieff pieces together the complicated reality behind the scandals of revelry and sexuality. The resulting story, defined by keen insight, deep affection and marvelous wit, captures the glory and indulgence of the age, and explores the many ways in which we have the capacity to love.

An Aristocratic Family, a High-Society Scandal and an Extraordinary Legacy

The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me

Пътни

Atinada Bir Kadin

The remarkable adventures of a Russian princess set against the tumult of the twentieth century.

A Revolutionary Life

Red Princess

This affectionate portrait of the 'Red Princess' by her granddaughter uses letters, diaries and interviews to recreate a vanished world and also explore the author's own Russian roots.

Sofka Zinovieff

About

Books

Join the club