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Red Sky (German Edition)

Their decision is to attack and kill Russian traitors fighting for the Germans and to earn their redemption that way. The characterisation in the book is a real strength, from the fictional such as Benya to those who really lived such as Stalin himself and his intensely intelligent daughter Svetlana. Apart from the intricate plotting, the sentence of death held over all the soldiers and especially Benya adds tension to the story right to its finish.

This is a wonderful read, so well written and deeply satisfying to the reader. Mar 12, Carol rated it it was amazing. Third in his 'Moscow' trilogy, Montefiore constructs a riveting read. Offered redemption, he joins a penal battalion of desperado Cossack cavalry to fight Nazi and Italian forces near Stalingrad.

Red Sky at Noon

Superb characterisation, huge narrative surprises, real danger and a The Steppes you can smell and feel as well as see, combine powerfully. And we get a glimpse of life in The Kremlin, and the dangerous, s Third in his 'Moscow' trilogy, Montefiore constructs a riveting read. And we get a glimpse of life in The Kremlin, and the dangerous, secret passion of Svetlana, Stalin's impulsive teenage daughter. Dec 04, Valentina Ch rated it it was amazing. Excellent written, just like all historical novels by Simon Montefiore.

Not as emotional and touching as Sashenka but still loved every page. May 21, Dave rated it liked it. Montefiore is better known as a historian and writer of non-fiction, but these three books are fictional — although based on real events from Russian history. Life in the camp is harsh and miserable, so when a chance comes two years later to join a penal battalion a shtrafbat formed to fight the Germans, Benya is quick to volunteer.

The rest of the novel follows the adventures of Benya, his beloved horse Silver Socks and the assorted group of murderers, Cossack gangsters and fellow political prisoners who fight alongside him in the Soviet cavalry. Together they undertake dangerous missions behind enemy lines, facing death, capture or betrayal — or all three — and for Benya, there is also a romance when he meets a widowed Italian nurse, Fabiana. With so much happening and with such an action-packed plot and interesting historical setting, this could have been a wonderful novel, filled with drama, romance and excitement.

However, I think Montefiore is probably a better historian than he is a novelist; although I have no doubts that he knows his Russian history, he never quite managed to bring the characters and events in this novel to life. I remember having similar thoughts about One Night in Winter , which was a more enjoyable novel in my opinion, but another one which made little emotional impact. Als 1e deel van deze Moskou-trilogie verscheen Sashenka, vervolgens Een koude winternacht en tenslotte de afsluiter De rode dageraad. Het is en Nazi-Duitsland is bezig met de verovering van de Russische stad Stalingrad.

Stalin zet alle mankracht in die voorhanden is om de stad uit handen van de Duitsers te houden. Zelfs gevangenen wordt vrijheid in het vooruitzicht gesteld als ze een bepaalde prestatie willen leveren in dienst van het Russische leger. Een van die gevangenen is de joodse schrijver Benja Golden die enkele jaren eerder ten onrechte is veroordeeld voor daden die hij nooit heeft gepleegd. Er wordt een peloton samengesteld van gevangenen, het zogenaamde sjtrafbat strafbataljon. Het bataljon vertrekt voor zijn opdracht en onderweg raakt Benja licht gewond waarna hij wordt geholpen door een Italiaanse verpleegster Fabiana Pellegrini.

Het is ook in die tijd dat de dan jarige dochter van Stalin, Svetlana Stalina, werk van de joodse schrijver Lev Sjapiro leert kennen en hem vanuit het Kremlin een compliment per brief laat bezorgen. Voorzichtig ontwikkelt zich iets moois tussen hen, dat Svetlana uiterst geheim wil houden voor haar vader die de relatie zeker niet zal goedkeuren. Evenals de beide vorige delen is ook De rode dageraad los te lezen zonder dat men informatie mist.

Het verhaal is volledig opzichzelfstaand, de enige referentie is de oorlog van Duitsland tegen Rusland. Montefiore is het ruimschoots gelukt om de twee verhaallijnen op wonderbaarlijke wijze te integreren in deze zwarte periode. Op onnavolgbare wijze schetst hij de overlevingsstrijd van burgers die als frontsoldaten moeten leven, tijdens de uitvoering van een haast onmenselijke opdracht.

Uitlekken van deze verhoudingen kan grote gevolgen hebben voor alle personen die er een rol in spelen. De reputatie die Stalin in die periode al heeft opgebouwd geeft weinig vertrouwen op een goede afloop als de liefdesgeheimen uitlekken. Daarnaast wordt de lezer een inkijkje gegund in de plannen die beide leiders, Hitler en Stalin, hebben ontwikkeld om hun doelen te bereiken. Met dit derde deel rondt de uiterst deskundige Montefiore zijn Moskou-trilogie op formidabele wijze af. Hij brengt hierin de geschiedenis tot leven en geeft een gitzwart verhaal met beide fictieve verhaallijnen en romantisch gekleurde tint.

Met een onverwachte plotwending aan het einde die de meeste lezers uiteindelijk tot volle tevredenheid zal stemmen. Apr 13, Wael EL Gabas rated it it was amazing. I really wish that I could give his boon more than just five stars, it is a brilliant litterature work from all aspects, the characters are well made and full of life, the plot is very good and interesting and very accurate in it is covering to the historian details, once you start reading this, you can not put it down until you are finish.

Jan 02, Barry Smirnoff rated it it was amazing Shelves: I enjoyed this book. First of all, it is right up my alley. Montefiore states that each book stands on its own, but some of the characters are in the other books. Golden is a Jewish Communist intellectual who begins the story in the Gulag. After having survived I enjoyed this book.

After having survived the Stalin Purges of the late 30's, his death sentence is commuted to 30 years hard labor in the gold mines of Magadan in the Siberian far East. When Hitler invades his Soviet ally, Golden sees a way out of the Gulag.

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He volunteers for a Punishment Battalion made up of criminals, cowards, and zeks, the residents of Gulag. He is put into a cavalry unit and trained to ride, shoot and charge with swords. He is given a horse to bond with and they are sent to the Stalingrad Front in the summer of They are told that they came win their freedom by spilling their own blood in combat. The story involves an attack behind the Axis lines and a mission to assassinate the leader of a group of traitors, who are attached to an Eisazgruppen murdering Jews and civilians on the Nazi occupied Steppe.


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Golden is a fish out of water as a Jew, a political, and city boy. He learns how to fight with his cossack comrades and fights and bleeds with them. Many are killed and the story has a brief love affair as Golden falls for a recently widowed Italian nurse.

Montefiore has written many books of Russian history along with the 3 Russian novels. Maybe he will decide to continue the saga into the post-war years and the Golden story will continue.


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  • If not, I wish Benya the best of luck. He has suffered enough and deserves to finish out his life with some modicum of normality and maybe some happiness? Sep 29, Vladislava rated it it was amazing. I greatly enjoyed this book, especially the duality aspect of war - how all the events are so surreal, yet very realistic. Feb 02, Roy Kelley added it. Montefiore has constructed a superb story around the exploits of Benya Golden, a Russian writer, who was sent to the Gulag's by Stalin's regime, for a crime he didn't commit.

    Life is barely survivable in the work camp at Madyak especially as Benya is really too old for the hard labour. He is imprisoned at the direct orders of Stalin himself and i The setting for Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Red Sky at Noon" is the brutal war between German and Italian forces against their Russian opponents in He is imprisoned at the direct orders of Stalin himself and is therefore surprised when he receives a phone call from the big guy offering the opportunity of redemption, if he joins a special Cossack cavalry brigade made up of prisoners like himself.

    The story takes us to the battlefields close to Stalingrad where the Russians are barely holding out against the might of a combined German and Italian advance. Perhaps surprisingly Benya's small cavalry unit breaks through the enemy lines but then find themselves isolated from their Russian comrades. There are a number of interesting and thought provoking sidelines to main story, which is Benya's survival from the threat of the battlefield or returning to the Russian side of the lines and likely execution for their retreat.

    There's a poignant love story between Benya and a nurse called Fabiana which is threaded through the action, and a close relationship between Benya and his horse White Sox. Further the story also takes in life at the top table, with Stalin himself and also the immature actions of his daughter Svetlana who attempts an assignation with another writer despite the fact that she's only sixteen.

    Stalin is not pleased when he finds out. Red Sky at Noon is a very satisfying read about a period in history that is seldom dealt with. Dec 17, Candace rated it really liked it. It covers a lesser known event in Soviet history when Stalin released prisoners from the Gulag to fight in penal battalions during World War II. Writer Benya Golden has been working in a mine in his particular Gulag and jumps at the chance to serve his country, survive his sentence, anything, anything.

    The brutal whimsicality of the Soviet system is again on display, but there is a chance that it will work out for Benya. Sequentially, this book falls in the middle of the story, and there's no reason to read them in order. Not wanting to toss spoilers in to the mix, you may know what happens to Benya in "One Night In Winter", but go along anyway.

    It's amazing that between one Terror or another, there were any Soviets left to fight in WWII and survive into the further horrors of the late '40s and early '50s. Montefiore does an excellent job of personalizing the history and showing the human cost of these programs. Jun 13, Raughley Nuzzi rated it liked it.

    This book tries really hard to be a rousing Red Cavalry-style story but falls short in a number of ways. Simon Sebag Montefiore has written several good books and novels and his roots as a journalist and historian show throughout.

    Full disclosure, I listened to this as an audiobook and the narrator did zero research on pronunciations of Russian and Ukrainian names, which flavors my review. There were a lot of obnoxious details in this novel that seemed to come from Montefiore's historic research. Soldiers regularly referred to military hardware by model and serial numbers in ways that seemed unrealistic for a group of peasant cossacks.

    Characters seem capable of recognizing the most nuanced dialect differences between tiny ethnic groups of the South Caucasus. There's an overwrought hasty love story that boringly raises the stakes. While the story had some interesting beats and takes place in an interesting microcosm of WWII that is often overlooked in the era of tank and plane warfare, it is overall forgettable and doesn't achieve the aspirational heights it reaches for.

    Jul 10, Joe rated it really liked it. This is the third book in the trilogy, though you do not need to read the previous two, as this is a separate story entirely. In fact, I've never read the others either. This book is set in Russia in World War Two and reminds me a lot of Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman, in its style and diction, although the setting here is narrower.

    The plot focusses on Benya Golden, a political prisoner in Siberia at the start of the war. He's released and rapidly enlisted into a penal battalion, a new army dr This is the third book in the trilogy, though you do not need to read the previous two, as this is a separate story entirely. He's released and rapidly enlisted into a penal battalion, a new army dreamed up by Stalin composed of criminals, to fight low-odds battles. If they survive, they could redeem their crimes in battle. The novel spans 10 days, as Golden as his group of misfits are sent behind enemy lines in a dangerous mission in the Steppes outside Stalingrad to assassinate a notorious partisan killer.

    There he meets an Italian nurse, working with the invading Germans, and, of course, they fall in love. The setting at times switches to Moscow and Stalin's headquarters and residence and we meet his daughter Svetlana who has a crush on a Red Army war correspondent. It's a beautifully crafted novel. Will have to pick the other two in the series up now. I have to say, I initially picked up this book because of beautiful cover, but was delighted to learn it was full of incredible substance. This book opened with a scene where calvary prepared their horses, and as you may know, Cossacks only one small element of the larger story are famously adept horsemen.

    This was the first book in a long time that I felt the writer had some meaningful experience with horses, each moment felt incredibly authentic and full of life.

    Red Sky at Night Shepherd's Delight - German missing: English ⇔ German Forums - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

    While reading the first few I have to say, I initially picked up this book because of beautiful cover, but was delighted to learn it was full of incredible substance. While reading the first few pages I literally gave a huge sigh of satisfaction, the writing was THAT good. I am only sorry I found out this was the third in a series after starting the book, although it certainly works well as a stand alone. To see some of my reviews and other bookish stuff I have videos posted on Youtube.

    Here is one to get you started: This was an interesting work of fiction set over 10 days in when the Germans were advancing on Stalingrad. The historical facts showing how barbaric war can be and the terror and psychological damage suffered by those who worked in the Gulags was thought provoking. The atrocities inflicted by the German Nazis and Russians during the second world war are also captured by Montefiore and whilst violent and unpleasant, they make you aware of what was happening during the Battle of Stalingrad - This was an interesting work of fiction set over 10 days in when the Germans were advancing on Stalingrad.

    The atrocities inflicted by the German Nazis and Russians during the second world war are also captured by Montefiore and whilst violent and unpleasant, they make you aware of what was happening during the Battle of Stalingrad - something I knew little about. The historical facts are combined with two fictional love affairs; one between Benya Golden a Jewish man who has been imprisoned in the Gulag but is offered redemption if he joins the Cossacks and sheds blood and a young Italian woman and the other between Stalin's daughter Svetlana and a married journalist, Lev Shapiro.

    You cannot help but sympathise for the desperate situations they each find themselves in and the tragic endings they undergo - one of the misfortunes of war. Red Sky at Noon , while it has an interesting premise, is laden with a ludicrous romance plot and ahistorical scenes featuring Josef Stalin and Svetlana Stalina that made it hard for me to take the book seriously.

    If this book had left out the subplots and focused on its protagonist, Benya Golden, I think it would have been an excellent read. Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.


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    • I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration. Benya Golden, a Jewish writer, has been imprisoned in a Gulag. Rotting away he is rescued by a group of gangsters and given privileges that keep him alive but he realises that he will never escape. A chance appears in the form of the opportunity to join a Cossack band in the Army fighting the Nazis as they approach Stalingrad, a chance for redemption or death.

      Meanwhile an erstwhile friend of his is conducting a dangerous and secret correspondence with Stalin's teenage daughter. LEO stripped my formatting when I wasn't looking because I typed the code wrong the first time. Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

      Comment And I know it as red sky at night, farmers' delight. Red sky in the morning, farmers' warning. Comment google shows mostly "in the morning" and not "at morning". Always happy to return a good deed. Comment Neither is at morning. Check other sources if you don't believe me. Comment And while we are on the topic: Your version has a take added. Doesn't that spoil the meter as well? Comment Oh, for heaven's sake. One of them rhymes with 'delight.

      One man's sailor is another man's shepherd, or whatever. Sources Abendrot Gutwetterbot', Morgenrot mit Regen droht. Morgenrot bringt Waoter in'n Schloot! You need to be logged in to start a new thread. Registration and participation are free! Ask the LEO community.