Sofka Zinovieff was born in London, has Russian ancestry and has lived in Greece for many years. Her latest book “Putney” is an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a much older man.
“It is rare to find oneself reading so compulsively a book that promises no resolution or easy answers; I admired this combination of intellectual honesty and bravura storytelling.”
“The front cover of Sofka Zinovieff’s second novel is a wink to Lolita, set against a backdrop of red buses and the bridge linking Putney to north London. The sunglasses perched on the head of a teenage Daphne, who lives in a ramshackle bohemian townhouse on the river’s south bank, also evoke Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film.”
“Thought-provoking and relevant, Sofka Zinovieff’s new novel “Putney” will provide plenty of book groups with fodder for discussions about female sexuality, child molestation, friendship and the #MeToo movement.”
A discussion with students about Putney and the process of writing a novel. Tuesday 14 June 2019
Once an Anthropologist, Always an Anthropologist? With alumnus Sofka Zinovieff, journalist and writer Sofka will talk about how her studies in social anthropology have influenced her life and work. After completing a PhD on contemporary Greek identity, she became a journalist and writer with a lifelong connection to Greece, which has featured in several of
Step inside Bloomsbury Publishing as we explore provocative storytelling and two authors of contemporary literary fiction who are unafraid to push the boundaries of style and content and be bold in their writing.
Putney will be published on paperback on June the 4th, 2019.
INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE Sofka Zinovieff and Tessa Hadley will be appearing with Juliet Nicolson Sofka Zinovieff’s novel Putney is a contemporary Lolita. Its subject is sexual obsession, revolving around an abusive relationship, unacknowledged for forty years, between a grown man and a young adolescent. Tessa Hadley’s novel Late in the Day explores the impact of loss on a group of
Andrew Marr in the New Statesman I “hugely enjoyed Putney by Sofka Zinovieff, about sexual obsession in the freethinking 1970s, and the anti-paedophilia world of today. It is beautifully written and genuinely shocking; it’s as if Nabokov had given Lolita eyes and a very clear voice.” Alex Preston in The Observer “Smart and furiously gripping.”
