Vesna Goldsworthy

'Captivating' Sunday Times 'Glittering' Sunday Express London dances to the tune of Gorskyâe(tm)s billions.The most enigmatic of oligarchs, Gorsky desires and gets the best of everything and now he has his sights set on Natalia. That she is already married is an inconvenient detail. Nick works in a shabby-chic bookshop. When Gorsky approaches him with the commission of a lifetime, Nick suddenly gains access to the world of the wealthy and the beautiful. But this privilege comes at a price and Nick finds his new life suddenly fraught with danger...

Gorsky

A Love Story

Iron Curtain

A Memoir

Chernobyl Strawberries

'Without quite realising that I would do it until it happened, I raised myself on my toes and kissed his frozen cheek. In Paris, it would have been an unremarkable gesture. In Alexandria, an invitation. I still had no idea about London.' The London winter of 1947. As cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. The Karenins keep their vodka under the layers of snow in their suburban garden, in bottles entombed like their Russian past. But when a young Frenchwoman arrives to work as a companion to the aged 'Monsieur Ka' he begins to tell his story... Albertine is the wife of a British army officer who is often abroad on covert government business. Lonely, yet eager to work, she begins to write Monsieur Ka's life story a as a secret gift to him, and even learns his mother tongue. To her ear it is like 'the sound of falling snow'. As she is drawn into Ka's dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations. For in this family of former princes, there are present temptations which could profoundly affect her future.

Monsieur Ka

Bestseller Bookfest 2019 Traducere și note de Luana Schidu „Tulburător și puternic.“ – Sunday Times Ne aflăm în iarna anului 1947, în Londra devastată de război. Tânăra Albertine Whitelaw, o franțuzoaică sosită de curând aici cu soțul ei englez, răspunde unui anunț văzut întâmplător și se angajează să-i țină companie câteva zile pe săptămână unui bătrân misterios, un nobil imigrant rus dintr-o familie care a inspirat unul dintre cele mai cunoscute romane. Și, în timp ce el își deapănă încet povestea, viața Albertinei e răscolită adânc.

Monsieur Karenin

Il Grande Gorsky

Leading names from the international literary scene present a stunning collection of conversations and essays. Contributors include: George Szirtes, David Constantine, David Solway, Gillian Beer, and many more.

The Norwich exchanges

Writing Worlds

Published more than a decade ago, Inventing Ruritania has become a standard study of the West's attitude toward the Balkans -- the "Wild East" of Europe. With its Western and Oriental influences, the Balkans have both attracted and repelled outsiders, offering a tantalizing alternative to familiar society. Completely different from "us" yet exactly what "we" used to be, the Balkans have particularly provided Western European and American writers and filmmakers with a wealth of images, characters, and ideas. In her prodigiously researched volume, Vesna Goldsworthy explores the entertainment industry's lucrative exploitation of Balkan history and geography and its affect on Western conceptions of the region. She traces the national, religious, and sexual fears foreign observers project onto Balkan lands and the use of Balkan archetypes. The work of an Anglo-Serbian writer and former BBC journalist turned academic, Inventing Ruritania maps an imaginary geography that has had palpable consequences in the practical world.

The Imperialism of the Imagination

Inventing Ruritania

Een Servische vluchteling werkt in een Londense boekhandel en krijgt opdracht een bibliotheek samen te stellen voor een puissant rijke Russische ondernemer.

"Exceptional. If there has been a more honest, calm, and profoundly moving memoir written in the last few years, then I've missed it."—Times Literary Supplement How would you make sense of your life if you thought it might end tomorrow? In this captivating and best-selling memoir, Vesna Goldsworthy tells the story of herself, her family, and her early life in her lost country. There follows marriage, a move to England, and a successful media and academic career, then a cancer diagnosis and its unresolved consequences. A profoundly moving, comic, and original account by a stunning literary talent.

Traducere de Luana Schidu Publicat în primăvara anului 2022, romanul Cortina de Fier: O poveste de dragoste a fost inclus în: The Times Best Books of 2022, The Times Summer Books, Financial Times Literary Editor’s Choice, The Independent Book of the Month, The Tablet Book of the Month, The Guardian Book of the Day, Amazon Kindle Bestseller, Hatchards Book of the Week, LRB Bookshop Book of the Week, LRB Bookshop Best Books of 2022. Milena, fiică de nomenclaturist cu funcție înaltă într-o țară comunistă nenumită din estul Europei, se bucură de un lux nelimitat și de o libertate, firește, limitată. Când îl întâlnește pe Jason, un poet britanic, e fermecată, aproape fără să-și dea seama, de aura lui boemă, și după un timp hotărăște să fugă în Anglia. O carte emoționantă, despre falia imensă creată de împărțirea nefirească a Europei și despre modurile infinite în care un regim politic te poate înstrăina de tine însuți. „Estul și vestul se întâlnesc într-o binevenită poveste dulce-amară despre iubire, loialitate și cântecul de sirenă al libertății.“ — Financial Times

O poveste de dragoste

Cortina de Fier

On a rainy afternoon in London’s old Chelsea, a charming multi-billionaire Russian oligarch, Gorsky, walks into an ailing bookshop and writes the first of several quarter-of-a-million pound checks. With that money, Gorsky has tasked Nikola, the store’s bored and brilliant clerk, with sourcing books for a massive personal library, which which will be housed in the magnificent, palatial home Gorsky happens to be building immediately next to Nikola’s own modest dwelling. Gorsky needs a tasteful collection of Russian literature to woo a long-lost love—no matter that she happens to be married to an Englishman. His passion for her surpasses even his immeasurable wealth, and Nikola will be drawn into a world of opulence, greed, capitalism, sex, and beauty as he helps Gorsky pursue this doomed love. Charmingly written and inspired by The Great Gatsby, Gorsky is a vicarious thrill—an ode to cosmopolitan taste and a brilliant reimagining of a powerful classic.

A Novel

'A book so full of steel and compassion that it stands glitteringly apart' Rachel Cusk Milena is a Red Princess living in a Soviet Satellite state in the 1980s. She enjoys limitless luxury and limited freedom; the end of the Cold War seems unimaginable. When she meets Jason, a confident British poet, Milena is appalled by his political naivety and his poor choice of footwear. Still, they fall into bed together, and before long Milena is secretly planning to escape to Britain. 1980s London defies her privileged expectations. The rented flat is grim and the food is disgusting but she is with the man she loves and there are no hidden cameras to record her every move. But then Milena discovers that Jason's idea of freedom hurts even more... With sharp wit and tender precision, Vesna Goldsworthy unpicks the failures of family and state. Iron Curtain is a sly, elegant human drama that challenges the myths we tell ourselves. 'A wonderful, perfectly-pitched novel: full of delightful intrigue and wry insight about the human predicament and its unique tensions' William Boyd

Since the 1800s, the Balkans - the Wild East of Europe - have offered material for the literature and the entertainment industries in Western Europe and America. In this process of imaginative colonization, products developed in the West - lands such as Bram Stoker's Transylvania (in Dracula) and Anthony Hope's Ruritania (in The Prisoner of Zenda) - became lucrative brand-names which remain much better known than their real counterparts.

Vesna Goldsworthy

About

Books

Join the club