The Star of Kazan

Product Information

You are soon transported to a magical city that seems to hum with colour, light and vitality. This is a book to be savored and enjoyed at a leisurely pace. I would call this a modern classic. It reads like one. Great storytelling, scene building, character development. Vienna comes to life with the author’s words. And so does the rundown Spittal in northern Germany, the other major setting in the book. this is the only eva ibbotson historical i had my own copy of when i was little, & i never felt v strongly about it -- i read it once, & then it got lost under the pile of other, brighter, bigger stories.

The Star of Kazan - Eva Ibbotson - Google Books

Nonostante ormai non sia più una bambina, e da diverso tempo direi, è stato un piacere leggere questa storia. In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there, but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her.

The professors are all siblings and have lived in the same house all their lives. None of them are married and are unlikely to be any time soon.

The Star of Kazan | PDF - Scribd The Star of Kazan | PDF - Scribd

Reading the title of the book, I imagined it to be a Fantasy book given its title as well as the cover image which invokes a sense of magic and mystery. The book in fact a historical fiction/ mystery novel which is set in early 20th Century in Vienna which was a part of the Austro Hungarian and German empire at the time. However given the evocative description of the neighbourhoods in Vienna, the Spanish Riding school, brooding castles in the German countryside and food delicacies, it could very well pass for a fantasy novel as well!This was a perfectly satisfying and fulfilling read, despite being a children's/middle grade book. I mean, every element of a good story, of good writing, of good telling, literally everything, is spotless. After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany This is just a fun, very enjoyable tale of an foundling child, Annika, who was taken in by Sigrid and Ellie, the servants of a trio of professors in Vienna. She has a happy life there with her adopted mother Ellie, her "aunt" and "uncles", and her many friends throughout the town. She daydreams about her mother one day coming for her, until it actually happens and she is dragged off to Germany.