Simon Sebag Montefiore's six best books

As a historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore's works include Jerusalem: The Biography, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and Young Stalin, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Prize (UK), and Le Grand Prix de Biographie Politique (France). His novels include the critically acclaimed Sashenka and the newly released One Night in Winter.

One of the author's six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

In my novel, teenagers in a Moscow reading club play out the duel scene from Pushkin's novel in a game that goes horribly wrong. But Pushkin's masterpiece is really about an adulterous love that cannot be. When Onegin meets his beloved at the end, she says she loves him too but can't be unfaithful to her husband: In my novel, which is really about love, an adulterous wife sends her lover that passage to say goodbye.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see Simon Sebag Montefiore's five best books about Moscow.

--Marshal Zeringue