Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
. . . A nightmare political movement steadily gaining power. . . .
This is 1922 Berlin.
One of the troubled city's growing number of refugees, Esther Solomonova survives by working as secretary to the charming, unscrupulous cabaret owner "Prince" Nick, and she's being drawn against her will into his scheme to pass a young asylum patient off as Anastasia, the last surviving heir to the murdered czar of all Russia. But their found "princess," Anna Anderson, fears that she's being hunted—and this may turn out to be more than paranoia when innocent people all around her begin to die.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060817275 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 02/06/2007 |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Sales rank: | 529,108 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.97(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
City of Shadows
A Novel of SuspenseBy Ariana Franklin
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Ariana FranklinAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060817267
Chapter One
Berlin, May 1, 1922
"Esth-er."
"What?" She tore off her Dictaphone headset, made a mark on a notepad, and went next door to his office.
He was sitting with his chair turned to the window that looked down onto the floor of his nightclub.
It was a fine nightclub, the Green Hat, one of the largest and most exclusive in Berlin. He'd hired Kandinsky to paint the walls -- "Russian scenes," he'd told him. "I want Old Russia" -- and been disappointed. "It's blobs," he'd said when he saw the result.
"It's wonderful," Esther had told him. And it was.
But his Russia hadn't consisted of blobs, so he'd insisted on lining the walls with huge stuffed brown bears and putting ribboned kokoshniks on the heads of the cigarette girls and hiring waiters who could squat-dance. "So they know this is a piece of Old Russia," he'd said.
"You're not supposed to say, 'What?' " he said now. "You're supposed to say, 'Yes, Your Highness.' " He was in a good mood.
"I'm busy. I'm translating your instructions to M. Alpert." She paused. "Are you sure you want to put them in a letter?"
"Why not?"
"Suppose the French police raid his office and find it?"
Prince Nick distrusted telephoneswitchboards, in case his competitors were bribing the operators to listen in, and since he spoke only Russian and German, she handled most of his foreign correspondence, which, she supposed, made her an accessory to corruption, tax evasion, not to mention fraud, all over Europe. But it was a job; she hadn't been able to get another.
"They won't. He's got the gendarmerie in his pocket." He blew out a redolent smoke ring. "And I've got the Polizei in mine."
His pockets were weighed down with them. His other cabaret clubs were popular with the high-rankers because he kept them discreet; politicians, judges, police chiefs, could cavort in privacy -- and did. Lists of members and their sexual preferences were kept under lock and key. There was a price, of course: they had to keep Prince Nick from prosecution -- they did that, too.
The police on the beat sold him information, usually about any vagrant good-looking young men and women who'd be likely recruits for his clubs. "I want them cheap, and I want them grateful," he used to say. He interviewed them himself. Nearly all came cheap, and most were grateful; working for Prince Nick was better than walking the streets.
In her case she'd had the choice of going on the streets or jumping into the Spree, and of the two she preferred the look of the Spree. It was the rabbi of the Moabit synagogue who'd suggested she apply to Prince Nick for work. The Jews knew of him because, for a price, he could get papers for those wanting to emigrate.
Papers -- the Wandering Jew's eternal bugbear. But if you could afford Nick's, you could go to the U.S. embassy in the Tiergarten and get an immigration visa for America. "Go see this Prince Nick, Esther," Rabbi Smoleskin had said. "A crook, yes, but a fair crook. And a Russian like you, so maybe he'll give you a job."
"With a name like Solomonova? And with my face?"
"Brains you got. Languages. A brave heart. Who cares for pretty?"
Prince Nick did; his clubs ran on pretty. He'd taken one look at her and opened his mouth to say sorry, but . . .
She hadn't given him the chance. "I speak English, French, German, and Italian well," she told him in Russian. "I can get by in Polish and Yiddish and Greek. I can type, I do shorthand and bookkeeping. They say you're an international businessman -- you need me."
Most of which was true. Not the shorthand, but she could learn.
"Oh, and Latin," she'd said, "I'm good at Latin."
"Always handy in cabaret clubs, Latin," he'd said, and she knew then that, if she could get him over the hurdle of her Jewishness, she'd have the job.
"How'd you get the scar?" he asked.
"Long time ago. In a pogrom."
"A Jew, then." In Old Russia pogroms happened to Jews.
"A Jew," she said.
"With an expensive education?" In Old Russia pogroms happened to poor Jews.
"My father was well-off. I had a mam'zelle and a tutor."
"What did your father do?"
"He was a banker."
"Yeah? So how'd you get mixed up in a pogrom?"
"Are you hiring me or not?"
He hired her, which confirmed that he was no more a Russian nobleman than Rabbi Smoleskin. Prerevolution Russia had been about the only country in the world where persecution of Jews was part of the constitution, and she'd never met one of its aristocrats who wasn't anti-Semitic.
Who he really was, where he came from, she didn't know even now. There was a slight slant to his eyes and a beautiful olive sheen to his skin that suggested Tartar, but he professed to be Russian Orthodox and made much of the estates he'd lost to the Bolsheviks. It didn't matter anyway; they were both frauds. And in a Germany that had lost the war, was losing the peace and its currency and, very nearly, its mind, it was only men like him who were making money.
His office had two windows, neither of them giving onto the outdoors. One looked down onto the floor of the club, two stories below, empty this morning. The other, which was small and had a sliding shutter, gave him a view of the large and illegal gaming room next door. Set into one wall was a safe like a miniature Fort Knox. Her own office, through a connecting door, was small and windowless, and she worked in it for a pittance.
He was in fine fettle today, smoking a cigar with his feet up on his desk, hair so sleek it might have been painted on, thirtyish, good-looking -- and as ersatz as the sign on his door and the name on his monogrammed writing paper: prince nicolai potrovskov.
Continues...
Excerpted from City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin Copyright © 2006 by Ariana Franklin. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
1920s Berlin. The end of the Great War has left the once-proud city, along with much of Germany, in financial and psychological ruin, crippled by economic depression, rampant inflation and a looming sense of hopelessness and despair. In this turbulent era, when ensuring one's survival is the name of the game, a strong-willed Russian-Jewish émigré named Esther Solomonova finds herself enmeshed in Berlin's teeming underworld—the only place she can reliably find work. In the employ of corrupt Russian "Prince" Nicolai Potrovskov, Esther is dragged into an audacious moneymaking ploy: the "discovery" in a German asylum of the Russian grand duchess Anastasia, whom Prince Nick means to use as a conduit to the Romanov riches rumored to be waiting for the rightful heirs.
As City of Shadows unfolds, Esther is left to reluctantly watch over and steward the mysterious, mute and possibly crazy Anna Anderson, the "long-lost Grand Duchess." However, it soon becomes apparent that a shadowy killer is also pursuing the mystery woman, and Esther is tossed into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse as the killer begins to pick off those close to her in increasingly brutal ways. Soon the quest to discover Anna's true identity, and why this killer is so bent on silencing her, hovers over every aspect of Esther's life. Set against the backdrop of what would soon become the madness of Nazi Germany, City of Shadows clearly evokes the fear and confusion of a terrible era—and brings together the mystery of Anastasia and the change in an angry and defeated nation.
Questions for Discussion
1. The entire book is told fromthe perspective of Esther and Inspector Schmidt. How do you think the story would have differed (if at all) if any of the other characters' perspectives had been used? Did you find Esther and Schmidt to be reliable, accurate narrators, especially as observers of the changing Germany around them?
2. The idea that people simply "want to believe" that the Grand Duchess Anastasia survived the execution of her family provides much of Prince Nick's justification for his scheme with Anna. Did you see this hope, this desire to believe in something so implausible, as a human virtue or a weakness? How does it compare with the rising public support for the National Socialist movement within the community at large?
3. Compare the supposedly deviant characters that populate Prince Nick's decadent Berlin to the fascist youths in the relatively "clean" SA movement growing in Germany. How does the author depict these two groups and what qualities seem to qualify as "moral" in this turbulent era? In what ways were these two groups similar to each other?
4. Consider the issue of post-war identity in this novel, both on a personal and national level. How does identity (and how it could be completely reshaped and reinvented in this era) influence, both for bad and for good, the actions of the individual characters in the book?
5. In the prologue of the book, we get a very brief glimpse of Anna and R.G.'s chance meeting at the Landwehr Canal. The devastating meeting of past and present in that one moment sets off the calamitous events that make up the rest of the book. What other examples of past-meeting-present occur throughout the book and what consequences result from these encounters?
6. What was your impression of Prince Nick? Did he strike you as a sympathetic character or a victimizer who simply exploited the poor and desperate? Did you think he actually believed that Anna was, in fact, Anastasia?
7. Why do you think Schmidt was so devoted to capturing the mysterious R.G. alive, even though he is aware of the greater threats rising around him? Do you think he should have taken more care to ensure his and Esther's safety?
8. At one point in the book, Esther advises Anna to avoid being a fraud, to "be content with being ordinary." Is this a principle that Esther applied to her own life? By the book's conclusion, did you think that she had successfully embraced her new life or was she destined to be haunted by her past?
9. Assuming that Esther and Schmidt survived their flight from Germany, what do you think happened to them? Do you think they stayed together? What kind of life would they have together?
10. How did the book's final twist regarding Esther's past change your perception of both Esther and Anna?
Related Subjects
Customer Reviews
Explore More Items
