About the Author

H. du Coudray was born Helene Heroys in Kiev in 1906 and spent her childhood in St Petersburg. Just before the Revolution, she escaped first to Finland, then Sweden, before arriving in England at the age of twelve. Another Country, written under a pseudonym while she was still a student, was awarded the prize in an open competition to find the best novel by an undergraduate at Oxford or Cambridge. Fluent in several languages, Helene Heroys finally settled in Geneva, where she worked as an interpreter. She was the author of a biography of Metternich andthree other novels, including The Witnesses, an epic study of the Russian Revolution.