The Secret City

The Secret City

Title: The Secret City
Author: Hugh Walpole
Release: 2022-03-22
Kind: ebook
Genre: Fiction & Literature, Books
Size: 771586
The Secret City is Walpole’s sequel to his earlier book about Russian life, The Dark Forest. John Durward, the English protagonist from that book and a semi-autobiographical stand-in for Walpole, is visiting St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) when he runs in to some old friends from England. Through them he meets Vera and Nina, two young and bourgeois sisters, and Nicolai Markovitch, a downtrodden and ridiculous inventor. Semyonov, a brooding doctor who is the sisters’ uncle and a character from The Dark Forest, returns as a dark, viperous thread weaving through the story.

Durward narrates the lives of these bourgeois Russians as they love each other and fight amongst themselves in equal measure. But as they obliviously carry on their cozy, lamp-lit lives, the Russian Revolution breaks out around them. St. Petersburg quickly changes from a comfortable, elegant, and gently mysterious city to a bloody and cold scar across the face of civilization. As the air fills with the sound of gunfire and the smell of smoke and soot, Durward and his English and Russian friends become a microcosm of the chaos they find themselves engulfed in.

Walpole lived some years in Russia during the Revolution, working as a journalist, then at the Russian Red Cross, and later as the Head of British Propaganda in St. Petersburg. His intimate knowledge of both the city and of the turbulent early days of the Revolution give The Secret City a more than convincing air. It’s the first book to have won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and is considered to be Walpole’s most delicate and insightful work.

More Books from Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Robert Louis Stevenson, Agatha Christie, Marie Corelli, Nikolai Gogol, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle, M. R. James, Saki, Sabine Baring-Gould, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Fergus Hume, John Kendrick Bangs, Jerome K. Jerome, Douglas OConnor, Grant Allen, Louisa M. Alcott, James Matthew Barrie, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, George MacDonald, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, E. F. Benson, Algernon Blackwood, Fred M. White, Arthur Cheney Train, G. K. Chesterton, Edgar Wallace, Wilkie Collins & Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Leslie Ford, David Brin, Jeff Cohen, Frank Lovell Nelson, Hal Charles, Hugh Walpole, Reginald Bretnor, Robert F. Young, Randall Garrett & Robert Silverberg
Hugh Walpole & August Nemo
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, George MacDonald, Arthur Cheney Train, Arthur Conan Doyle, Algernon Blackwood, Thomas Hardy, John Kendrick Bangs, Agatha Christie, Hugh Walpole, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Grant Allen, Wilkie Collins, Saki, Fergus Hume, Edgar Wallace, J. M. Barrie, E. F. Benson, Jerome K. Jerome, M. R. James, Fred M. White, Sabine Baring-Gould, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Nikolai Gogol, Louisa M. Alcott, Douglas OConnor, Marie Corelli & G.K. Chesterton
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole & August Nemo
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Andy Adams, B. M. Bower, Richard Middleton, Pierre Louÿs, Hugh Walpole, Henry Handel Richardson, Gertrude Stein, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Mór Jókai & August Nemo
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole