About this item
A powerful novel that moves seamlessly between the euphoria of revolution and the intimate and agonizing pull between love and loyalty.A young woman scrambles up the icy hill above Independence Square in Kiev, desperate to avert the bloody crackdown that threatens the protesters below. The outcome of a revolution, and her brother's safety, depend on her. And though neither of them realize it, so does the fate of the man she is frantic to see.Over a decade later, Simon Davey, a disgraced diplomat, follows Olesya Zarchenko into the Tube in London, convinced that she was responsible for his ruin. When he tracks her to a riverside mansion, he begins to see that her life has not been what he thought it was, and neither has his own.Moving from the euphoria of the barricades to an oligarch's private dungeon, between idealism and corruption, Independence Square is the story of a country striving to escape its history, and a man struggling to understand his past.
About the Author
A. D. Miller studied literature at Cambridge and Princeton. His first novel, Snowdrops - a study in moral degradation set in modern Russia - was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the CWA Gold Dagger and the Galaxy National Book Awards, and was longlisted for the IMPAC award. It has been translated into twenty-five languages. His second novel, The Faithful Couple, a story of friendship and remorse, was published in 2015. He is also the author of The Earl of Petticoat Lane, an acclaimed memoir of immigration, class, the Blitz and the underwear industry that was shortlisted for the Wingate prize. A.D. Miller has been The Economist's Moscow correspondent, political columnist, writer-at-large and correspondent in the American South; in 2018 he became the magazine's culture editor. In 2014 he won Travel Story of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, for a piece about 24 hours at a motorway service station. He has been shortlisted three times for the David Watt Prize, for another FPA Award and for Political Commentator of the Year and Magazine Commentator of the Year at the Comment Awards. He has also written for the Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Spectator, Literary Review, Evening Standard, Intelligent Life and 1843. He uses his initials because another novelist already had his name.
