Paul Morgan’s beautiful writing bewitched with his first two novels set in the Roman Empire and the world of art. Now, with The Winter Palace, he tackles the horrors of World War II. In 1939 Anton, a Polish army officer, and his wife, Elisabeth, are ripped apart and cast asunder from their beloved Winter Palace in the bucolic countryside of a nation about to be bestially savaged by both Hitler and Stalin. Anton ends up as a prisoner of war in Siberia (this section was especially fascinating to me as an uncle of mine suffered that fate), before battling with a ragtag army in Central Europe, en route to Jerusalem at the dawn of the Jewish state. Elisabeth, in the meantime, suffers equally as a Nazi concubine before working as a nurse in Poland whilst assisting the resistance. The author never flinches from the evils encountered by Anton and Elisabeth; I was, somehow, reminded of Jerzy Kosiński‘s The Painted Bird), and the novel can be harrowing, albeit softened by the slightly saccharine love between the two. As with his other novels, the author’s prose matches his ambition, and he maintains a strong hold on the sweeping plotline, so that The Winter Palace can be recommended as a compelling, bracing read.
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