At 55 Caroline Landon is internationally famous both as an actor and an activist for environmental causes. But when she meets a congenial young woman of literary talents she decides to collaborate with her on a biography dealing with two aspects of her life which she has not revealed before. One is her upbringing by her grandparents after both her parents died young; the second an eventful period spent on a tropical island where a passionate affair involved her in a failed revolution. The histories of Caroline and her Russian grandmother Nina constitute a saga which sprawls over both time and space, dealing with Francophile Russians, Anglophile Asians and Europhile Americans. The ?rst major event is a wedding in St Petersburg in 1908, the last the birth of a child in Manhattan in 2002.
The author was born in Sri Lanka and received his secondary education there before graduating from an Australian university. In Australia he works in educational administration. He lives in Sydney with his wife and daughter.