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Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

THE Reading room

Historical fiction

Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten, Bloomsbury

Before Catherine the Great, there was Catherine I, the all-powerful Russian Empress who was catapulted from serfdom to the highest position in the land. Her story is shocking and in UK-based author Ellen Alpsten’s intoxicating hands it’s also a vicious, bloody, sexy romp. This is fearless historical fiction with a sharp contemporary frisson which offers a thought-provoking vision of the brutal, knife-edge lot of women at the time.

The illegitimate, illiterate servant has captivated the author since she first found her in a history book when she was 13. “I wanted to learn more about Catherine but couldn’t. There was no book, no thesis, no biography,

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