The Pretender

The compelling story of Anastasia has always fascinated and captivated readers, and here Mary Morrissy creates the tragic story of the mysterious young woman who deceived the world into thinking she was the last surviving daughter of the Tsar Nicholas II. The young woman, saved from suicide in a freezing Berlin canal in 1920, was dramatically shown after her death to be an impostor. Who was this young woman? And what was her past, her friends and family, that she abandoned to take on a new life? From the few known facts Morrissy creates the biography of a nobody, a Polish factory worker whose childhood is set against the First World War and the turmoil of vanquished Germany, a childhood blighted by violence, trauma and loss, who makes the world believe she is a grand duchess, the last of a doomed royal dynasty.