RED DAUGHTER

Stalin's daughter was a difficult, complicated and deeply sympathetic woman. In one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Alliluyeve, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin, abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a young lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America. She is a contradictory celebrity, charismatic and headstrong, lonely and alienated by her adopted country's radically different society. Persuading herself that all she yearns for is a simple American life, she attempts to settle into a suburban existence, but when this dream ends in disillusionment, she reaches out to Peter. He is the one person who understands how the chains of her past still hold her prisoner. As their relationship deepens, unfolding under the eyes of her CIA minders, their private lives cease to be their own. The author's father was in fact that young lawyer who escorted Svetlana to the US, and he has drawn upon private papers and years of extensive research to recreate this story of one woman's search for a place to belong. Fictionalised into an excellent novel. 268pp, paperback.