Why read The Princess of Siberia?

Book cover of The Princess of Siberia: The Story of Maria Volkonsky and the Decembrist Exiles

Book description

Beautiful, cultivated, the daughter of a hero of the Napoleonic wars, Maria Volkonsky had been married only one year when in 1825 the tsar sentenced her husband to life imprisonment in Siberia. Despite her family's and the tsar's opposition, Maria was determined to join her husband in exile. She was…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Princess of Siberia as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sharon Hudgins

Author

A fascinating account of the remarkable lives—and wives—of several Russian aristocrats who were sentenced to prison, hard labor, and exile in Siberia after participating in a failed attempt to overthrow Tsar Nicholas I in December of 1825. Eleven wives (two of them princesses) of those unfortunate noblemen voluntarily followed their husbands to Siberia, even though the women were forced to give up their own lands, titles, and children back in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The Princess of Siberia focuses on one family in particular, the Volkonskys, who settled in Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia, after Prince Sergei Volkonsky's years…

From Sharon's list on The best books about Siberia for those with insatiable wanderlust.