Nino Haratischvili – författare

Published for the first time in English, the sweeping debut novel set in bohemian Paris, by the author of international bestseller The Eighth Life.

In 1953, a teenage girl, Jeanne Saré, jumps in front of a train at the Gare du Nord station. She leaves behind writings that to some are unreadable, but to others tell universal, unspoken truths about the lives and struggles of women. When published in the 1970s, her work triggers a rash of copycat suicides. It is hastily withdrawn from sale and eventually forgotten about.

Then, in 2004, two women from opposite corners of the globe — Amsterdam and Sydney — rediscover Jeanne Saré’s book and set out to discover who the author was and what happened to her.

Women across the ages have attached their own stories to Saré’s, often with devastating results, but the truth about her may be even stranger than the fictions they have invented.

A modern-day Wuthering Heights from the author of international bestseller The Eighth Life.

Two families, one devastating secret, and an epic story of forbidden love.

Eight years have passed since Stella last saw Ivo, but when he returns, the reunion of their unconventional family will change the course of her ordinary life. As children, Stella and Ivo grew close as their parents embarked on an affair that would shatter both families. Later, as teenagers, their own relationship would be the cause of further scandal. Now, as adults, they set out on an odyssey to uncover the truth about another family’s past, and to understand their own.

My Soul Twin is an intense love story about forbidden desire, the ties that bind us, and whether we can ever truly forget what we leave behind.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEAN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘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, 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 centre 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. 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.