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Empress of the Night; a novel of Catherine the Great.
Empress of the Night, my second novel of Catherine the Great is a study of Catherine’s character. It shows the Russian empress in her intimate moments, with her lovers, children, grandchildren, and in the midst of her political scheming. Power is her game and she is not shy in admitting it. You may not always like her. You may not always approve of her choices, but you will have to admit she is a fascinating woman with few equals in world history.
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William Wadsworth reviews “The Winter Palace”
Read MoreWilliam Wadsworth
The Winter Palace
by Eva Stachniak
DoubledayToronto-based historical novelist Eva Stachniak first carved a niche in the study of deceit in 2000, with Necessary Lies, an award-winning story of marital betrayal in modern Poland.
In The Winter Palace, Polish-born Stachniak brings out the laudanum and belladonna, the smoke, mirrors and creaking bedsteads for another sassy immigrant success story, set in the 18th-century Russian court.
Now No2 on the Globe & Mail’s fiction hardback list, The Winter Palace is billed as ‘A Novel of Catherine the Great’, but it’s really a tale of how two bright immigrant teenagers team up for survival in snake-pit salons over the next 20 years. Stachniak quickly establishes her principal characters with Conradian clarity, and the pages of The Winter Palace fly by as its central character, Barbara, leaves her native Poland for St Petersburg, where her bookbinder father cultivates her literacy and repairs the libraries of Russia’s nobility.
Winterpalast: German Kultur Spiegel Bestseller
And here is a link to Die Presse review--in German–of Winterpalast.
Read More“Stachniak sets a tone that grips the reader from the first page on, and vividly paints the atmosphere of the Czar’s court, the smells, the tastes, the superstition and the addiction to new fashions, the unimaginable opulence…” It’s well-written and thoroughly convincing!”
“The Winter Palace” in the media
John Barber, Eva Stachniak: In search of Catherine’s Greatness.
Read MoreThe orchid that Eva Stachniak bought at Costco six years ago has never stopped blooming since the day she put it on the sill of a sunny east-facing window at her home in Toronto’s Little Poland neighbourhood, near High Park. Less colourful examples with more respectable provenances bloom intermittently on the same sill, but the Costco orchid is perennial.Was it merely a coincidence then that the same influential retailer just bought several pallet loads of The Winter Palace, the novel Stachniak has spent most of that time writing? Or is there some cosmic charm at work? Other Canadian writers may wonder. For although there may be greater literary honours available to them, there is no more reliable indicator of success than to be singled out by Costco. Good things follow.
“The Winter Palace” — selected reviews
The Globe and Mail (January 2012): Jane Smiley
Read MoreIt isn’t incidental that award-winning Toronto novelist Eva Stachniak asks us to ponder the Winter Palace, in St. Petersburg, Russia, before she asks us to ponder Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, and her predecessor, Elizabeth.
Polish Language Site