The Balkan Trilogy Book 1 : The Great Fortune

Bucharest, Autumn 1939: newlyweds Guy and Harriet Pringle arrive in a city alive with contrasts and rumours, on edge with wavering loyalties and the tension of war. Guy, teaching at the university, throws himself into Bucharest life, embracing all around him. Harriet, struggling to adjust to married life and to her husband's friendship with the over-attentive Sophie, finds life in a city cut off from the outside world less straightforward than she first anticipated. Peopled by an international cast of characters, including the inimitable and eccentric Russian émigré Prince Yakimov, The Great Fortune, the first volume in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, is a rich and rewarding portrait of a city and country at war, and of the first months of a marriage.