The Dictator's Wife: A mesmerising novel of deception and BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club pick

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Elena Ceausescu receiving a honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires in 1974. Source: Online Photo Library of Romanian Communism Strange how glamour enchants us, how it makes us forget. A fur coat insists on us ignoring the abattoir.’ Marija presents as hot and cold, innocent and guilty, evil and good, all at different times, making it hard to work out whether she should be convicted or acquitted. Her failure to co-operate with the defence team doesn’t help her cause. I kept the rythm, waiting for the main character to appear. And the meeting with Marija Popa was disappointing. I expected an overly sweet cover for a tyrant lady; someone knowing that gaining her lawyers to her cause, will help her to show a maternal figure, incompatible with being the monster everyone thinks she is. But seeing an arrogant person, already playing the VIP to the team that can buy her freedom, broke the magic. So, I couldn't believe Laura's observation of being almost sad for someone like Marija, that had everything and lost it all.

I don’t know where to start with this book, it took my breath away and I feel bereft that it has finished. I felt in thrall to Marija reading this, she is addictive. It’s an intoxicating read and deliciously good. Berry keeps you just off kilter enough to make you feel like you are the one being watched, it is outstanding! I have always had questions about the wives and children of world leaders and figures throughout history that have held distatorships but none more prominent in my mmind than how much did their wives really know and/or agree with their policies and reigns of terror and for that reason this book was so thought provoking and intrinsincly fascinating. There were moments that were truly heartwrenching and yet there were also moments of love. The characterisation is sublime, the depiction of Marija Popa in particular was fabulous. I found I couldn’t help falling in love with her in the same way as all of those around her, even though there was always the threat of her being an absolute monster. I couldn’t decide until the explosive final chapters whether she was guilty or innocent of the charges she faced, but I didn’t’ t really care, and I could completely understand why everyone wanted her attention.Elena Ceausescu (1916-89) was the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-89). During the 1970s and 80s, she was one of the two most powerful women on earth (the other was was Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Great Britain). Her reputation was falsely built up thanks to a fraudulent PhD, appointments to Central Committee positions, and extensive propaganda. My debut novel follows a captivating dictator's wife standing trial for her dead husband's crimes in post-communist eastern Europe, and the web of lies she weaves around the young female lawyer defending her. The plot twists were strong and the entire read felt like whirlwind. I can't lie, I did read in one sitting because I couldn't bare to put the book down. The emotional trauma of the protagonist, the manipulation of the accused and the deep-rooted betrayal could easily be taken out of the book and applied to so many external, real-world scenarios. I love a good historical fiction. I definitely recommend. The book combined real world law terminology (and British law firms) to deliver an accurate and thought-provoking look into who society deems monsters and who we give free passes to. How we define history and how we allow it to shape our present and our future. How money and status enables access to creating an illusion of innocence. Are any of us innocent? How do we truly define innocence? The author has created an imaginative Eastern European country, and has set the novel in the early 1990s, under the shadow of the fall of communism and the raising of the Iron Curtain. The fictious country of Yanussia was formerly a part of the USSR and now that the doors have been flung open, its populace are gunning for justice against the corruption of the past…or are they?

I know the phrase “will have you reading long into the night” gets thrown about an awful lot, but it is completely true for this book. That said, there are plentiful ingredients in the tale, with questions arising about whether information leaks are happening and whether someone is working against them. Pavel, perhaps, as he was seen making a clandestine visit to the prosecutor's office, even though he may have been one of Marija's former lovers, or Radutu, the team's barrister, who may still be associated with the good old days. Maybe even Ecaterina, Marija's sister, possibly still holding an old family grudge. And then there’s an American investment banker in the picture, a possible dark history involving the mansion they are staying in and questions regarding the relevance of the country's famous sweet manufacturing facility formerly run by Marija's sister. Yet, in reality, Elena's success was a fiction. Her reputation was falsely built up thanks to a fraudulent PhD, appointments to Central Committee positions, and extensive propaganda—all helped along by the intervention of the Securitate, Romania's brutal secret police. The path to prestigeA gripping, intelligent, utterly-of-the-moment thriller’EMMA STONEX, bestselling author of The Lamplighters A fascinating exploration of absolute power, female agency and the complexities of complicity. Atmospheric, claustrophobic and so elegantly written' ELLERY LLOYD, New York Times bestselling author of The Club Assad appears to have almost a cast a spell on the profile writer, Berry observes. “Personal magnetism and charm is very hard to fight against. You look over here and you don’t look at the extrajudicial killings over there.” It continued: “She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her ‘the element of light in a country full of shadow zones’. She is the first lady of Syria.” Institute of Organic Chemistry (Romanian Academy) in Bucharest built in the 1970s. Source: socialistmodernism.com

There are many quotable moments within, some memorable characters you can see as they walk into rooms. The author really does captivate in her descriptions: In the fictional country of Yanussia - somewhere in the Romania/Balkans/Russia area of things, the dictator Constantin Popa has been toppled in a coup and died in the process. Because he is no longer able, it his widow Marija who is now on trial for many many crimes - theft, corruption, murder - all the usual stuff that comes out of the rotten woodwork. She has engaged a firm of lawyers in London to defend her. If she is found guilty she will be executed. The story is told in the first person from the point of view of a junior associate lawyer - Laura - who was born in Yanussia and with her parents fled for London when she was about 6 years old. The lead lawyer is another ex-Yanussian, who had been at Oxford with Marija. The sense of place is fabulous, and the juxtaposition of the bleak streets of Yanussia where people are starving and freezing, with the opulence of the home of Marija Popa highlighted the stark difference between those in power and their people.She isn’t a person, she’s a puppeteer. She discovers what you are, what you can and cannot bear, and uses it.’