Yet another of the spoils of Penguin Book Bloggers’ Night, Konstantin is soft-spoken Welsh author Tom Bullough‘s most recent novel about the father of russian space travel, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky(see the stamp below).

Turning to this novel the moment I had finished Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, I was deeply immersed in Russia, and keen to learn more of this great country.

Even before opening this book, without having the faintest idea of what it was about, I was drawn to it’s beautiful cover, simple, white, with russian-looking details drawn in red. The opening phrases,

Kostya hurried down the bank towards the frozen Oka, fine and light in his heavy sheepskin coat as a sparrow in its winter plumage

echoed the white simplicity of the cover and drew me into an icy expanse of Russian history from the very first words. I have always been a judge-by-the-cover kind of reader…