Iron Curtain

A Love Story

By: Vesna Goldsworthy

Narrated by: Allyson Voller

East and West collide in a "timely" and "bittersweet tale of loyalty, love, and the siren call of freedom" (Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times).

Milena Urbanska is a red princess living in a Soviet satellite state in the 1980s. She enjoys limitless luxury and limited freedom; the end of the Cold War seems unimaginable. When she meets Jason, a confident but politically naïve British poet, they fall into bed together. Before long, Milena is planning her escape. She follows Jason to London, where she's shocked to find herself living in bohemian poverty. The rented apartment is dingy, the food disgusting, and Jason's family withholding, but at least there are no hidden cameras recording her every move. As she adjusts to her new life, however, Milena discovers the dark side of Jason's idea of freedom.

With cool wit and tender precision, Vesna Goldsworthy delivers a razor-sharp vision of two worlds on the brink of change, amidst the failures of family and state. Iron Curtain is a sly, elegant comedy of manners that challenges the myths we tell ourselves.

©2022 Vesna Goldsworthy (P)2023 Tantor

Men are jerks, women are strong

Another installment from the Women’s Fiction Collective which is obsessed by the notion that almost all men are either punks or brutes while women are fountains of virtue. The heroine admires her Soviet hero father, but otherwise this novel tells a simple story all too simplistically. Even Gorbachev, who is fleetingly glimpsed here, comes off as a probable jerk

I like the book

This is the first book of this author that I read, and I didn't know what to expect. The story is interesting, I became fond of the main character Milana. Overall it is a good novel, I would recommend it.

Great . . .

wonderful, complex story but please remember that people speaking their own language would not be speaking with an accent. When Milena speaks English, it is appropriate. When she is speaking to her family or the embassy officials, it makes no sense.