Talking Location With Joanna O’Donoghue – WORLD
Days in the Caucasus

Location(s): Azerbaijan
Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
Era(s): Early 20th century
We all know families that are poor but ‘respectable’. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not ‘respectable’ at all…
This is the unforgettable memoir of a childhood spent in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early twentieth century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity.
Banine remembers her luxurious home, her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess and her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and 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.
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