The Girl from the Hermitage

Molly Gartland

Galina was born into a world of horrors. So why does she mourn its passing?

SHORTLISTED: Impress Prize

LONGLISTED: Bath Novel Award

LONGLISTED: Blogger’s Book Prize

LONGLISTED: Grindstone Novel Award

It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Vera are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating soup made of wallpaper, with the occasional luxury of a dead rat. Galina’s artist father Mikhail has been kept away from the front to help save the treasures of the Hermitage. Its cellars could now provide a safe haven, provided Mikhail can navigate the perils of a portrait commission from one of Stalin’s generals.

Nearly forty years later, Galina herself is a teacher at the Leningrad Art Institute. What ought to be a celebratory weekend at her forest dacha turns sour when she makes an unwelcome discovery. The painting she embarks upon that day will hold a grim significance for the rest of her life, as the old Soviet Union makes way for the new Russia and Galina’s familiar world changes out of all recognition.

Warm, wise and utterly enthralling, Molly Gartland’s debut novel guides us from the old communist world, with its obvious terrors and its more surprising comforts, into the glitz and bling of 21st-century St Petersburg. Galina’s story is at once a compelling page-turner and an insightful meditation on ageing and nostalgia.

‘A beautifully written book that takes you right into the characters’ world. Highly recommended’ Lucinda Hawksley

‘Compelling and enthralling...a convincingly authentic story, as well as a moving and thought-provoking one’ NB Magazine

‘Sweeps its heroine from surviving on soup made from wallpaper in 40s Leningrad to the bling of 21st-century St Peterburg. Recommended’ Waitrose Weekend

‘The best historical fiction helps us walk through history alongside ordinary people and that’s what The Girl from the Hermitage achieves with deceptive ease’ Liz Trenow

‘What a brilliant book! Evocative, tender, tragic and inspiring – I loved it’ Hannah Persaud

‘A fine addition to the rich genre of historical fiction set in St Petersburg’ Moscow Times

Paperback: 288pp

Published: Lightning (September 2020)

ISBN: 9781785631887