Books Set in Asia: Jerusalem, Israel and Russia

A Woman in Jerusalem, by A. B. Yehoshua (2004)

Read: September 13, 2025

3 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Siberia, Russia and North America: New York, New York.

The Nesting Dolls, by Alina Adams (2020)

 

The Nesting Dolls focuses on three Jewish women: Daria (from 1931 to 1942), Natasha (from 1970 to 1991) and Zoe (1991).  Daria is Zoe’s great-grandmother, who was born in Russia and married the talented musician, Edward Gordon.  They and their two young daughters were sent to Siberia for a minor infraction during the Stalin years.  The janitor, Adam, of their building was also deported to Siberia.  He had a reputation for having reported on his mother for her infractions, thus was feared.  He ostensibly was being deported for not having reported Daria’s family to the authorities.  In Siberian village, however, he was granted better quarters than most if its occupants.  Adam would come to play a vital and integral role in saving Daria’s family.

 

We then skip a generation to Natasha, Daria’s granddaughter.  The family was now living in Odessa.  Natasha had a brilliant mind for mathematics and was hoping to attend the prestigious Odessa University.  Sadly, the quota for Jews was filled and Natasha was giving failing marks on her entrance exams.  She had to settle for a mediocre school and was then given a job teaching math to junior high students.  Her childhood friend, Boris, had always been in love with her, but she took him for granted.  One day she met Dima, a refusenik, who convinced her that she could be instrumental in letting the outside world know about the atrocities going on in Russia.  Natasha fell in love with Dima, and soon finds herself pregnant.  Her only way out was to marry Boris who, while being seemingly apolitical, was able to gain passage out of the USSR.

 

Finally, we meet Zoe, Natasha’s granddaughter.  She was born in America but bears the burdens and guilt imposed upon her by her grandmother and great-grandmother.  Like them, she, too, has two men in her life and must choose between what she believes is best for her family and what is best for herself.

 

Each of the three women are encased in each other’s lives, much like the nesting dolls that Russia is famous for.  Life does not always give you want you think you want, but it just might give you what you need.

 

I loved this novel.  I really felt the characters come alive.  I also loved how the author skipped a gereration and focused on the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Daria, the initial character.

 

Read:  June 15, 2021

 

5 Stars

Books Set in North America and Europe

The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescot (2019)

The Secrets We Kept is a fascinating historical fiction about how the novel Dr. Zhivago made its way out of the Soviet Union and earned Boris Pasternak the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.  The CIA played a role in that endeavor.  The novel is told through many voices, including that of Olga Ivinslaya, Pasternak’s long-term lover, and the women in the CIA’s typing pool.

Pasternak’s manuscript had been banned from publication in the Soviet Union on grounds that it shed a bad light on the political situation in that country.  The manuscript was spirited out of the Soviet Union and the Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, had the novel translated into Italian where is was first published.  

The 1950s were marked by the Cold War.  The CIA believed that freedom produced great art, thus initiated its “cultural diplomacy”, designed to expose the non-free world with music and literature of the West.  Russia was known for its great authors and literature.  When rumors abounded that Russian author, Boris Pasternak, had written a sweeping historical epic, interest in the West was piqued.

Once the CIA learned that the manuscript had reached beyond the Iron Curtain, it took steps to publish the novel in Russian and secretly slip it back into its home of origin.  In the 1950s, women had very few employment opportunities.  This novel focuses on several women who were employed by the CIA, ostensibly in the typing pool, but who were also recruited as carriers or swallows for spying on the Soviet Union.  While the women depicted in the novel are fictional, many of the other characters in the novel are real.

This was a fun novel and it has inspired me to find a copy of Dr. Zhivago to re-read.

Read: June 6, 2020

4 Stars

Books Set in North America, Europe and Asia

Edge of Eternity, by Ken Follett (2014)

This novel is the third book in Ken Follett’s The Century Trilogy.  The first two books are Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.  The trilogy follows the generations of 5 families, whose lives are all intertwined, spanning from the early years of the 1900s through the century.  The first book, Fall of Giants, focused on the Russian Revolution and World War II. Winter of the World focused on World War II.  This final book covered a host of social issues beginning with the Cuban missile crisis, the erection of the Berlin Wall and the American Civil Rights marches and ending with the election of Barack Obama.

We meet the later generations of the families from the first two books in the series in this novel.  We experience the Cold War through the eyes of the Franck family who lived in Berlin until almost overnight it became East Berlin.  Families were split – some members free to travel about in the West while other members stuck under the regime of the Stasi in East Berlin.  The novel takes us through to the fall of Communism of the1950s to its collapse in the late 1980s.

The twin sibling in the Russian Dvorkin are close but are on opposite sides of the political structure.  Dmitri gets a job as an aide to Khrushchev, while his sister, Tanya, writes for TASS, but sneaks the dissident writings of a political prisoner to the free world for publication (reminiscent of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

We experience the Civil Rights Freedom rides through the idealized eyes of young George Jakes, a young man with a black mother and white political father.  He later becomes an aide to Bobby Kennedy and watches the progression of the enactment of Civil Rights laws.

We move on to the music and drug scene in San Francisco in the mid-1960s.  We experience Vietnam through the experiences of a young naturalized citizen.  The characters in the families grow from idealized young people out to change the world into harden by life with some of their dreams realized, while others are left behind.  Nixon becomes President, then we see the cause of his downfall.

The original families depicted in the first book are the same throughout the series, one need not have read the first two books to appreciate this one.  This novel is cram filled with historical events and facts.  It is well researched and provides on of the best explanation of the Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis that I have read.

The book is long (nearly 1100 pages), but it is a page-turner.  It kept my attention even though I knew the outcome of the historical events described in the book.  I greatly enjoyed this novel and felt I got to know most of the characters in the families living through these momentous events.

Read:  March 24, 2020

5 Stars

The Century Trilogy:

     Fall of Giants; Book I (Read: August 3, 2011)

     Winter of the World; Book II (Read: March 17, 2015)

     Edge of Eternity; Book III (Read: March 24, 2020)

Books Set in Europe and North America: England, Russia and United States

Heads You Win, by Jeffrey Archer (2018)

This novel begins in 1968 when Alexander Karpenko is a 16-year-old living in Leningrad, Russia with his parents.  His father has plans to form a union for dockworkers, but his plans are thwarted when he is assassinated by the KGB.  Alexander suspects that his former friend, Vladimir may have had a hand in the assassination.

Knowing that their lives are in danger, Alexander and his mother must escape Russia.  Alexander’s uncle has a plan for their escape ~ to hide in a crate intended for a container ship.  Alexander flips a coin, which will determine their destination ~ England or America.

From here, the story takes a turn.  We go back and forth between both alternatives.  One alternative finds Alexander, now known as Sasha, in England.  His mother starts her life as a cook, and ultimately the owner of several restaurants.  Alexander is a stellar student and finds himself at Cambridge University.  Eventually, he enters politics and becomes a member of parliament.

In the other alternative, Alexander, lands in New York City and becomes known as Alex.  Life in New York is more hard-scrabbled.  He quickly becomes a hustler and runs several stalls in a market, before being shipped to Vietnam in the war.  After his stint in the army, he becomes involved in the banking industry.

Both versions of Alexander, however, retain an interest in the political intrigue occurring in his native Russia.  After 30 years, both feel the pull to return.

There is a “surprise” ending, however, all the hints to the ending are scattered throughout the novel and I guessed the end.  Alexander's former childhood friend turned out to be Vladimir Putin.

This was a fun read.  Not high literature, but an easy and enjoyable book.

Read:  March 29, 2019

4 Stars

Books Set in a Global Environment: United States and USSR

Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War, by Giles Whittell (2010)

This book of non-fiction delves into the events leading up to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the Berlin Wall.  In the 1950s, Willie Fisher, also known as Rudolf Abel, was in the United States as an undercover agent for the USSR.  Through a comedy of errors, he was captured by the FBI, tried and sent to Federal Prison.

Francis Gary Powers was an American pilot hired by the CIA to fly reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union to look for Soviet missile sites.  He piloted a U-2, which could fly at unimaginable heights.  It was believed that the plane was shot down, survival of the pilot was not possible.  All that changed on May 1, 1960, when the U-2 Powers was flying was, indeed, shot down over the USSR and Powers survived the crash.  He was immediately captured, tried as a spy and imprisoned.

Around the same time, wanderlust Frederic Pryor, was studying communist economics at the Free University in West Berlin.  Until the Berlin Wall was constructed, he freely crossed between East and West Berlin.  A fact not unnoticed by the East German police.  He was arrested on suspicion of spying and imprisoned.  He had no connections with the US Government, but his parents were wealthy and were acquainted with some powerful men in Washington.

Bridge of Spies sets the foundation of the nuclear missile discussions, or lack thereof, between the two superpowers.  Shortly before Powers was shot down, US President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Khrushechv were poised to meet in Paris to discuss a nuclear test ban treaty.  The U-2 incident derailed the meeting with a growing distrust evident between the US and the Soviet Union.  The author details the tensions and misunderstandings of both leaders.

Two years later, however, tempers had cooled somewhat, and each country recognized the benefits of holding a prisoner exchange.  The details of the exchange were carefully planned.  Abel had an inkling that an exchange might be possible, but Powers and Pryor were completely unprepared.

This is a very readable history of the events leading up to, and surrounding the U-2 incident and its impact on relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Read: December 19, 2018

5 Stars

Books Set in Europe/Asia: Russia

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles (2016)

The novel begins in the summer of 1922 when Count Alexander Rostov, an unrepentant aristocrat is placed under house arrest in Moscow’s luxurious Metropol hotel by a Bolsehvik tribunal.  Although he had a suite in the hotel, after his sentence (for the crime of writing a poem) he finds himself confined to a small room in the belfry.  He settles into his surroundings, initially thinking he can carry on as usual.  When he goes into the barber shop for his weekly trim, he is in for a rude awakening.  Yet he remains ever the optimist.

He soon befriends Nina, a young precocious girl.  Together they regularly dine and play little games.  Nina has discovered all the secret passages within the hotel, and shares her knowledge with Rostov.  She has a copy of the master key to all the rooms that allows the two to enter the various guest rooms and offices as will.

Rostov becomes the head waiter in the hotel’s fancy restaurant, the Boyarsky.  He meets people from the “outside” and develops strong relationships with many of the hotel staff.  Nina grows up, marries and has a daughter, Sofia, of her own.  During a political purge, Nina’s husband is sent off to Siberia.  Before leaving to find him, Nina asks Rostov to watch Sofia for a few days.  A few days turns into years.  Rostov, concerned for Sofia’s future, uses his resources and connections to plot a plan to protect the young girl left in his care.

I found this novel to be very charming.  The characters were well developed and most were very likable.

Read:  June 24, 2017

4.5 Stars 

Books Set in Russia

The Last Romanov, by Dora Levy Mossanen (2012)

Six years ago, I read Harem by the same author.  I loved that book.  This book didn't live up to my expectations.  It is a fictional account of the final years of Tsar Nicholas II and his family as recalled by Darya Borisovna Spiridova.  Darya, of course, is fictional.  She was the caretaker of the young Alexei and believed that he had survived the massacre that killed the rest of his family.  When the story opens, Darya is over 100 years old and is still searching for the young prince.  The novel is a blend of fantasy and realism.

3 Stars

Read: May 29, 2014