Days in the Caucasus

A scintillatingly witty memoir of a young woman’s struggle for freedom, growing up in Azerbaijan on the eve of the Russian Revolution.

“Characters so vividly drawn that their raucous voices seem to echo long after they have vanished from sight.” — Wall Street Journal

Growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early 20th century, Banine had an 'odd, rich, exotic' childhood that left her continually caught between East and West, tradition and modernity.

She remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and they lost everything. How, amid revolution and bloodshed, she fell passionately in love, only to be forced into marriage with a man she loathed - until the chance of escape arrived.

By turns gossipy and romantic, wry and moving, Days in the Caucasus is a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a vanished world, and of how the past haunts us. Banine’s gripping memoir provides fascinating insight into the history of the little-known and understood Caucasus region. It tells the poignant story of how, having grown up in Azerbaijan, Banine is forced to flee her home-country following the Russian Revolution, carrying with her the memories of a life that would never be the same again.