The Eighth Life

Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century.

'That night Stasia took an oath, swearing to learn the recipe by heart and destroy the paper. And when she was lying in her bed again, recalling the taste with all her senses, she was sure that this secret recipe could heal wounds, avert catastrophes, and bring people happiness. But she was wrong.'

At the start of the twentieth century, a family prospers on the edge of the Russian Empire. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. Caution is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a bitter aftertaste ...

Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the center of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia's is only the first in a symphony of grand but often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.

Tumbling down the years and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. Great characters and more significant relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends.