Selected as an Amazon Kindle Book of the Month
May 2024
Named one of the Top 6 Books in the UK by the London Morning Star!
ReviewsBuy now on Amazon‘An astonishing work, brilliantly told. In Iordana Ceausescu, Colin Sargent has given us a fascinating window into the brutal regime of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu and their near destruction of Romania. A cautionary tale for our times.’
– Nancy Schoenberger, author of The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters
‘A fascinating look at Romania — now a staunch NATO ally — as it emerges from the Cold War. Centered on the story of a close relative of feared dictator Ceausescu, it provides a uniquely human frame to the dangerous turbulence of that dynamic and complex period in Eastern Europe.’
– Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Supreme Allied Commander at NATO (2009-2013); co-author of 2034, a Novel about the Next World War
‘If Red Hands is Macbeth then it is Romeo and Juliet too, for the pounding heart of the book is a great love story that never fails to move.’
— D.D. Johnston
‘Thrillingly good. Sargent tackles the biggest themes — historical change, greed, power, love, desire, and what it means to be free — but at the heart of the book is a gloriously human depiction of one woman’s extraordinary life. A tale from last century and a warning for this one, Red Hands is a novel of rare power that teaches us much about Romania and even more about ourselves.’
– D.D. Johnston, author of The Secret Baby Room
‘Red Hands is uniquely unsettling and a standout read… a pageturner fuelled by intrigue, blind greed, and staggering accuracy.’
– Victoria Rowell, author of The Women Who Raised Me
Colin Sargent’s Red Hands is based on the author’s conversations with Iordana Ceausescu, daughter-in-law of the Romanian dictator. It’s utterly brilliant. Maybe, along with Anna Funder’s Stasiland, the best book ever written in the West about the fall of Eastern Bloc dictatorships?
– D.D Johnston
Red Hands is a deeply compelling tale of a woman caught inside the destruction of a regime. Iordana is a normal girl, brought up with all the perks of Romania’s corrupt communist regime. Then she falls in love and marries the eldest son of her parents’ arch-rival, Romania’s monstrous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. They become the in-laws from hell, but she brings them their only grandson. And then there’s the 1989 revolution, when crowds will kill anyone with the Ceausescu name. In all the blood and chaos, can Iordana keep her little son alive?
Drawn from eight hundred hours of unique interviews with Iordana Ceausescu, and told in her voice.
Learn more about the making of Red Hands in this interview with Colin W. Sargent.
See the latest review of Red Hands here.