Female First (http://www.femalefirst.co.uk)
Exclusive interview with Simon Sebag Montefiore, 1 April 2014
by Lucy Walton
One Night in Winter above all is a love story but it’s also a thriller and is set in Moscow in 1945 capturing what it was like to live in Russia under Stalin with the themes of Love and Marriage and Children running through it.
・The book has been praised for being a gripping page turner, so how have you developed this addictive quality to your writing?
I see the world as an adventure thriller and a voyage of discovery. To me all lives are lives of mystery and secrecy and that's what I write about.
・What appealed about this time and setting for you as a writer?
Throughout my writing I have been drawn to this period of time because everything that happened under Stalin’s rule was made into a question of life and death so the stakes are very high which is a dream setting for a writer.
・Please tell us about the research process into your previous books, as well as this one.
As I know this period very well I didn't need to do much new research. Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels but on history books like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is CURIOSITY! Asking and answering the questions of what those people were really like, what were they thinking and feeling at that time.
・You have been nominated for and won several literary prices so how does this make you feel and affect your confidence as a writer?
It is wonderful and very rewarding. On the other hand prizes can be very political and a bit of a casino. In the past I’ve won prizes for my history books but it is so exciting and thrilling to win a prize for this novel [Political Novel of the Year] – and to be nominated for the Orwell Prize, particularly as Orwell is my hero!
・What is next for you?
I can’t wait to write the third in this series of Russian novels which started with the publication of Sashenka in 2008 and has been rejacketed to tie in with the paperback release of One Night in Winter. I am already planning the third novel which will complete the trilogy but the writing will have to come after I’ve finished my new history book which looks at the Romanovs and is a history of all the tsars!
One Night in Winter by Simon Sebag Montefiore is published by Arrow, £7.99
by Lucy Walton for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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