This is the third volume of the Moscow Trilogy. I devoured the other two, Sashenka and One Night in Winter, and I couldn’t let Red Sky at Noon go.These three historical novels all stand alone but there are a few unifying threads that will tease the reader that will approach Red Sky at Noon without having read the other two.This is a novel that explicitly shows the horrors of the war and the psychological damages provoked by life in the Gulags. It’s about the constant fear in Stalin’s years, about Cossacks, horsemen and horses, survival, appreciation and indifference for life, treason, but also about camaraderie, pride, and surely, even in the most desperate situations, it’s about intense, extreme, enthralling, crazy, romantic love!Red Sky at Noon is set in the hot summer of 1942 in the steppes of southern Russia during the final moments of Hitler’s invasion of Soviet Union. The background rumbles with the great cavalry charges of one of the most ferocious war ever fought.The plot is developed along three narrative strands. The main one revolves around the war of Benya Golden, while the other two see respectively Stalin’s war strategies, and his daughter Svetlana’s forbidden correspondence.It all takes place in ten intense, wild, long, hot, dusty, bloody days. The novel opens, like Montefiore’s history books, “in media res”, in the midst of things. It’s modulated by flashbacks that gradually cast a new light on the present situation, revealing the reasons of certain behaviors and thoughts, but leaving the reader with traces still undisclosed and something to look forward.The protagonist is Benya (the real trait d’union of the trilogy), a peaceful, thin, Jewish writer who was in the Gulags for political reasons and later was sent to join a penal battalion. Benya had never ridden a horse nor killed anybody before, and found himself in a position of never trusting anyone in his group, a colorful and graphic selection of misfits and criminals of all kinds. While able to maintain his human feelings, Benya coped with the little respect for life around him. Wounded, he got involved in a love affair with Fabiana, an Italian nurse, a fascists on Hitler’s side, therefore an enemy. A burning, sweet, terribly dangerous relationship gave them the most extraordinary and exhilarating sensations, and put them on a desperate run for survival. “The bandits in love were riding with a giddy recklenessenss towards the Don… Fabiana let her hair down, and was galloping so fast…”Fabiana is a beautiful and well-rounded character. She was from Venice (Venice details are exquisitely precise and fascinating). She was a decent, modest, sensual, sophisticatedly well read, and graceful woman who showed, in the end, to be also audacious and determined.The other love story sees the 16 years old Svetlana, as a protagonist. Described by the author as small and curvaceous, she was lonely and miserable because everybody was afraid to get near her due to her father. She loved reading, and in her readings she found the first romantic passion of her life. The article of a charming older journalist stimulated her curiosity, she wrote to him, and an ardent correspondence of loving senses blossomed. The most daring and risky one, but they could not resist it. Here the reader meets Stalin and his children Svetlana and Vasily, and also Beria and Motolov. They are portrayed accurately and are all familiar to those who read Montefiore’s history books on Stalin.The many characters that animate the story are all rendered with a solid and persuasive psychological introspection. Some of the characters are historical (with a special appearance of Hitler), some already mingled in the other novels of the trilogy, some are new such as Benya’s disparately assembled companions, or the obtuse and rough Malamore that wants to have Fabiana at any cost, or the patrician Montefalco soft, logic and perspicacious. Some are horses.The description of the steppes with their interminable horizon, the river Don, the horses and their riders, the forceful mad rides, the dust, the heat, the sweat, the pain, the smells, and the sex are so naturally evocative. And while this is clearly a Russian novel, in reading about horsemen riding across sunbaked grasslands in times of violence, we can perceive the homage, as stated by the author, to the American Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry or Cormac McCharthy.But this is a Russian novel and a “Russian novel is not real without a station scene”, and in Red Sky at Noon there is a station scene, and it’s the most uplifting one.The usual historical accuracy of the novels by Montefiore is fundamental to me and I appreciated the Author’s Note at the end of the volume. There, he makes a distinction between history and fiction (one thing especially surprised me!), writes about the historical facts and the novels that inspired him, explains certain historical and political events, and reveals some practices of the time such as the distribution to the German troops of methamphetamine that allowed them to overcome fatigue and fight more viciously (as we read in the novel).Montefiore is an excellent storyteller. This is an immensely readable novel written with a vibrant and captivating style. It’s remarkably insightful and definitely relishable, and I highly recommend it.