Red Princess

Discovering an old Russian diary written when Princess Sophy Dolgorouky was a young woman trapped in Nazi-occupied Paris, the author digs deeper into her grandmother's life by traveling to her birthplace of St. Petersburg, and then to the Crimea, where she fled after the 1917 Revolution. She uncovers hidden M15 files, and then returns to the Nazi camp where her grandmother was interned, worked with the French Resistance, discovered Communism, and showed great bravery in defending the rights of the Jewish prisoners. Even more outrageous in its day than her conversion from princess to communist was Sofka's private life. She not only believed in sexual freedom, but often placed love, literature, and adventure before her children. Much more than the story of a princess in exile, Sofka's story is of someone whose existence was dislocated by revolution, yet who believed in revolution as a way of making the world a better place.