Petrograd

Originally published in Welsh in 2008, Wil Roberts’ Petrograd was reprinted within eight weeks, winning Wales’ Book of the Year in 2009, as well as ITV Wales Readers’ Choice Award 2009. It’s the summer of 1916 and the Alexandrov family prepare to embark on their annual holiday, accompanied by an army of staff primed to cater to their needs. Teenage, precocious Alyosha Alexandrov has never known anything but a life of privilege. He spends his days avoiding study and pursuing pretty young maids. But Russia is poised on the brink of epochal political upheaval and within a year Alyosha is separated from family, security, and the innocence of youth. Set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, spanning the turbulent years from 1916 to 1924, Petrograd is a vast, ambitious novel from an award-winning writer. The first in a trilogy, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year Award (Welsh Language), it tells the compelling, convincing story of the Alexandrov family as they each struggle to adapt to the ravages of war and revolution.

Petrograd is Wiliam Owen Roberts’ fourth novel. To date he has written six original TV series and three films, as well as series and plays for radio and the stage. His first novel Bingo! was published in 1985, followed by Y Pla, which won the Welsh Arts Council Prize for Literature in 1988, appeared in English in 1991 as Pestilence and has since been published in nine languages. His latest novel, a sequel to Petrograd, called Paris was published in 2013, and the third novel in the trilogy will be published in 2016.