I would like to introduce you to this novel that I hope will really sweep you up in its passionate story. It is inspired by the true background of my own mother and Russian grandmother who, under terrible conditions, had to flee to China from the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The exotic tales my mother told me of her early life in China fired my imagination to work overtime, until at last I decided to find out more about that period of the Far East. While doing so, I fell in love with the fascinating country that is China. The result is The Russian Concubine.

At the heart of my novel is Lydia Ivanova, a Russian teenager struggling to survive in a strange and often cruel China in 1928. Her world is blasted wide open when she falls in love with Chang An Lo, a fierce young Communist. But behind the stuffiness of the International Settlement, evil stalks as ruthlessly as within the Chinese triads.

It is a story that entranced me. I hope you will find it both moving and exciting, a young girl’s fight for survival and for the man she deeply loves.


Kate Furnivall