"Gripping and cleverly plotted. Doomed love at the heart of a violent society is the heart of Montefiore's One Night in Winter... depicting the Kafkaesque labyrinth into which the victims stumble." The Sunday Times "A nail-biting drama ... Montefiore writes brilliantly about love, timeless dilemmas, family devotion, teenage romance and the grand passion of adultery. Readers of Sebastian Faulks and Hilary Mantel will lap this up." Mail on Sunday "A master storyteller when writing as a historian, Sebag Montefiore's fiction is just as compelling in this thriller set in Stalin's Moscow." GQ "A thrilling work of fiction. Montefiore weaves a tight, satisfying plot, delivering surprises to the last page. Stalin's chilling charisma is brilliantly realised. The novel's theme is Love: family love, youthful romance, adulterous passion. One Night in Winter is full of redemptive love and inner freedom." Evening Standard "What happens when you cross Donna Tartt's The Secret History with one of the scariest times in Russian history? You end up with Simon Sebag Montefiore's One Night in Winter ... Based in truth, this novel will keep you biting your nails until the very end." Books and What Not Blog "Snuggle up in front of the fire with a glass of red and this captivating story ... a dark enigmatic thriller ... the way he weaves fiction and history is a true gift." Marie Claire "Seriously good fun... the Soviet march on Berlin, nightmarish drinking games at Stalin's countryhouse, the magnificence of the Bolshoi, interrogations, snow, sex and exile... lust adultery and romance. Eminently readable and strangely affecting." Daily Telegraph "Not just a thumpingly good read, but also essentially a story of human fragility and passions, albeit taking place under the intimidating shadow of a massive Stalinist portico." The National "Compulsively involving. Our fear for the children keeps up turning the pages... We follow the passions with sympathy... The knot of events tugs at a wide range of emotions rarely experienced outside an intimate tyranny." The Times "The novel is hugely romantic. His ease with the setting and historical characters is masterly. The book maintains a tense pace. Uniquely terrifying. Heartrending." The Scotsman "This tightly written page-turner crackles with authenticity ... if you are wiping away a tear by the end it wont be the thanks to the chill of Soviet winter. Love and death swirl at the heart of One Night in Winter. A terrific storyteller." Daily Express "Hopelessly romantic and hopelessly moving. A mix of lovestory thriller and historical fiction. Engrossing." Observer "A novel full of passion, conspiracy, hope, despair, suffering and redemption... transcends the boundaries of genre, being at once thriller and political drama, horror and romance. His ability to paint the tyrannical Stalin in such a way as to make the reader quake with fear is matched by his talent for creating truly heartbreaking characters: the children who innocently find themselves...behind the dank walls of the dreaded Lubyanka prison; their parents, torn between the need to be seen as loyal Bolsheviks and the love they have for their families ... One Night in Winter is a gripping read and must surely be one of the best novels of 2013." Steve Emmett, NY JOURNAL OF BOOKS "Delicately plotted and buried within a layered, elliptical narrative, One Night in Winter is also a fidgety page-turner which adroitly weaves a huge cast of characters into an arcane world." Time Out "Engrossing novel... based on similar real events and certainly his ease with the setting and historical characters is masterly...the invented characters are well-drawn too." Scotland on Sunday "Sebag's new novel draws in the reader and renders time meaningless. Brilliantly depicted." Jewish Chronicle "One Night in Winter entertains and disturbs and seethes with moral complexities: how far would we go to preserve a secret or protect a loved one? All aspects of this "intensified life" are captured in this intricate, at times sobering, but always absorbing novel." The Australian "A novel of passion, fear, bravery, suffering and survival ... novel mostly about love ... predictably terrifying - but the novel's romantic soul tempers the terror and makes for a gripping read ... pitch-perfect." The Spectator "Engrossing" The Scotsman "This gripping novel is a chilling reminder of the darkest days of Communist Russian, and the power one man can wield over a nation's lives." Daily Mail
