An epic family saga beginning with the Russian Revolution and swirling
across a century, encompassing war, loss, love requited and unrequited,
ghosts, joy, massacres, tragedy. And hot chocolate.
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian
empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate
recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A
caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a
very 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 all too 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. A ballet dancer never makes it to Paris and a singer
pines for Vienna. Great characters and greater 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.
