Enchantments

Praise

“[A] splendid and surprising book….Kathryn Harrison has given us something enduring – the last romantic figure of the [Romanov] era, a whip-cracking circus girl who was once an intimate part of a dying empire.”
—New York Times Book Review
 
“Part love story, part history, this novel is a tour de force….[told] in language that soars and sears.”
—More
 
“A mesmerizing novel.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
 
“Kathryn Harrison triumphantly returns to her historical fiction roots with Enchantments, the sweeping (and wholly imagined) story of love between two unlikely allies….Harrison takes a particular moment in time and brings it to stunning life….re-imagining history—and a love story—in a completely new way.”
—Bookpage
 
“A surreal tale fueled by a legendarily randy real-life healer and his lion-taming daughter….A scrupulously researched retelling of the fiery end of Russia….Most of all, Enchantments is about the irreducible mysteries of human motivation.”
—Elle

“A sumptuous, atmospheric account of the last days of the Romanovs from the perspective of Rasputin’s daughter, Enchantments animates a kaleidoscopic breadth of historical detail with the sensuous, transporting prose that is Kathryn Harrison’s trademark.”
–JENNIFER EGAN, author of A Visit From the Goon Squad

“Ask yourself who, in all the world, would be the best novelist to imagine being Rasputin’s daughter. Kathryn Harrison makes the answer obvious. Her Enchantments is a stupendous work of historical imagination.”
—PETER CAREY, author of Parrot and Olivier in America
 
“Kathryn Harrison locates within the crevices of history moments of poetry and passion that electrify the reader. In Enchantments, Ms. Harrison takes us on a magic carpet ride to Russia one hundred years ago, and with perfect grace, impeccable style, and great narrative flair, she gives us a whole wounded world that is for the course of this utterly compelling novel as real as our own lives. Actually: more.”
—SCOTT SPENCER, author of Man in the Woods and Endless Love
 
“Enchantments is wonderful: fascinating, informative, historically persuasive, and full of sympathy and tenderness for its endearing characters. This is Kathryn Harrison at her lyrical best.”
—RON HANSEN, author of A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion 

“[A] bewitching historical novel about the infamous demise of a legendary dynasty….Harrison sets historic facts like jewels in this intricately fashioned work of exalted empathy and imagination, a literary Fabergé egg….[A] dazzling return to historical fiction”
—Booklist (starred review)