Days in the Caucasus

This memoir recounts the author's childhood in Azerbaijan during the early twentieth century, growing up in a wealthy but unrespectable family. It describes the luxurious lifestyle, the German governess, the strict Muslim grandmother, and the bickering relatives. It also details the Bolshevik revolution and how the author fell in love and was forced into marriage. The book is a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a vanished world, exploring how the past haunts us.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 288 pages
\n Publication date: 26 March 2020
\n Publisher: Pushkin Press
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We all know families that are poor but respectable. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not respectable at all. This is the extraordinary memoir of an odd, rich, exotic childhood—of growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early twentieth century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity. Banine remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and they lost everything. How, amid revolution and bloodshed, she fell passionately in love, only to be forced into marriage with a man she loathed—until the chance of escape arrived. By turns gossipy and romantic, wry and moving, Days in the Caucasus is a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a vanished world, and of how the past haunts us.

We all know families that are poor but respectable. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not respectable at all. This is the extraordinary memoir of an odd, rich, exotic childhood—of growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early twentieth century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity. Banine remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and they lost everything. How, amid revolution and bloodshed, she fell passionately in love, only to be forced into marriage with a man she loathed—until the chance of escape arrived. By turns gossipy and romantic, wry and moving, Days in the Caucasus is a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a vanished world, and of how the past haunts us.

\n Weight: 238g\n
Dimension: 129 x 197 x 21 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781782274896\n \n