Book Beginnings on Fridays and The Friday 56

My book for this week's beginning and page 56 is from one of my favourite authors; Simon Sebag Montefiore. I have three of his non-fiction books; Catherine the Great & Potemkin, Stalin, the Court of the Red Tsar and Jerusalem, the Biography. The book about Catherine and Potemkin is absolutely fantastic, so interesting. I am reading the book about Stalin for the moment, and Jerusalem will come one of these days.

When I found Sashenka, a novel of fiction by him, I just had to have it. I love his writing, so it will be interesting to see if his fictional book lives up to his non-fictional ones. As you understand, I have not read it yet.

Book beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader

"Part One - St Petersburg, 1916
It was only teatime but the sun had already set when three of the Tsar's gendarmes took up positions at the gates of the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls. 

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice

"She could not understand why the workers of the industrial world, especially in St Petersburg and Moscow, the peasants in the villages of Russia and Ukraine, the footmen and maids in her father's houses, did not rise up and slay their masters at once. She had fallen in love with the ideas of dialectical materialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. "