Chekago

Hodder & Stoughton

Chekago was the reason why Sarah adopted the pseudonym Natalya Lowndes. The novel describes the lives of a group of Russians living in central Moscow during the 1980s. Based on true stories, Chekago became famous as one of the first foreign novels to give an accurate pictures of Soviet domestic life before Perestroika and the second Russian Revolution of 1991.

The anti heroine of this novel is an American academic writer visiting the Soviet Union in order to research a book about Soviet women. She ends up ruining the lives of her Russian friends by publishing her findings and not concealing her identity so that her connections are traced back to the people who have unwittingly provided her with contentious and unflattering source material about the Soviet Union. Even in the 1980s and 1990s contact with foreigners could be dangerous for ordinary Russian citizens. In order to avoid the kind of catastrophe she outlines in the novel, Sarah hid her identity in order to protect her friends from possible harassment by the authorities. The pseudonym remained as her fictional persona for two subsequent novels and she has abandoned it only recently.

This first novel took Sarah a number of years to write and was borne out of experiences she and her family encountered during visits to the Soviet Union. When the manuscript was finished it took a long time to find a British publisher and at home Sarah still keeps a box of more than thirty rejection letters.

Published finally by the London firm Hodder, Chekago went into three editions in the first year of publication and was widely reviewed. Dutton in New York published the first American edition and the book was translated into Portuguese for the Brazilian market.

Angel in the Sun

Hodder & Stoughton

In this second novel, also published by Hodder under the pseudonym Natalya Lowndes, Sarah took a historical theme , setting a passionate love story against the violent and turbulent background of the Russian revolution. The novel chooses a little-known aspect of the revolution and is set in a manor house deep in the countryside where owners, inmates and uninvited house guests wait to see what the future will bring them.

Snow Red

Hodder & Stoughton

A thriller set in Eastern England and in Moscow. The disturbance and controversy sparked off by the changes brought about by the collapse of communism in the 1990s provide the setting for this murder mystery concerning an elderly academic and his young Russian wife. The detective who solves the mystery works in conjunction with a sinister Russian policeman and an Asian debt collector.