A scintillatingly witty memoir of a young woman's struggle for freedom, growing up in Azerbaijan on the eve of the Russian Revolution. <p/>"Characters so vividly drawn that their raucous voices seem to echo long after they have vanished from sight." -- Wall Street Journal <p/>Growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early 20th century, Banine had an 'odd, rich, exotic' childhood that left her continually caught between East and West, tradition and modernity. <p/>She remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and they lost everything. 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. <p/>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, and of how the past haunts us. Banine's gripping memoir provides fascinating insight into the history of the little-known and understood Caucasus region. It tells the poignant story of how, having grown up in Azerbaijan, Banine is forced to flee her home-country following the Russian Revolution, carrying with her the memories of a life that would never be the same again.
