Paullina Simons

Russian-American author whose sweeping WWII romance The Bronze Horseman became a beloved cult novel, celebrated for its emotional intensity and Leningrad setting.

Paullina Simons is a Russian-born American author whose historical romance trilogy beginning with The Bronze Horseman has accumulated one of the most passionate and loyal readerships in contemporary fiction. Born in Leningrad and emigrating to the United States as a teenager, Simons drew on her Russian heritage and years of research to create an epic love story set against the harrowing backdrop of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II.

The Bronze Horseman, published in 2001, follows Tatiana Metanova, a young Russian woman, and Alexander Belov, a Soviet officer with a complicated past, as they fall in love during the most brutal siege in modern history. The novel is uncompromising in its portrayal of suffering — starvation, war, political terror — but equally uncompromising in its portrayal of passion and devotion. Readers frequently describe it as one of the most emotionally overwhelming books they have ever read.

The trilogy continues with Tatiana and Alexander and The Summer Garden, tracing the couple’s lives from wartime Russia to postwar America. Simons has also written thrillers and other standalone novels, but the Bronze Horseman series remains her defining achievement. For readers who are willing to endure heartbreak in exchange for a love story of genuine epic proportions, set against one of history’s most dramatic backdrops, Simons’s trilogy is in a class of its own.