Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143964 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 422 pages

Customer Reviews

The Search for Anastasia
Franklin combines skillful dialogue and plotting in a new take on the tragic history of Anastasia Romanov, the Russian princess who may or may not have been executed during the Russian Revolution. Central to the retelling are the female perspectives on discounted lives, sexual battery, and the reduction of women to pawns in an ongoing clash of egotistical, cynical, and predatory males. By setting the story in an unstable post-war environment, Franklin enlarges on the social and political situations that further denigrate women as citizens and human beings. Don't miss this one.

Inventive Plot

Ariana Franklin is the pseudonym of a well-known author of historical novels, Diana Norman, wife of the film critic Barry Norman. She is a former Fleet Street Reporter and lives in Hertfordshire.

Having read the author's other two books, the Mistress of the Art of Death and The Serpent's Tale, I decided to try this novel written before the above two. Although this book was an interesting read I cannot say that I enjoyed it as much as the above two, possibly because they were medieval novels, a period that I enjoy reading about very much.

However it would be unfair to criticise the book simply because of the period of history it depicts and all things being equal it was an enjoyable read. The storyline of the book takes place in Berlin, three or four years after the end of the war and revolves around a scheme to pass a young asylum patient off as Anastasia, the last surviving heir to the murdered Russian Czar . . .

The plot is both believable and inventive and the book is well written, in fact everything a reader could want from a good story.