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Red Heaven
Red Heaven is the story of a child’s journey to adulthood, his loss of those he loves and his fixing of them in memory. It begins in the late 1960s in Switzerland, as the unnamed narrator’s ideas about life are being shaped by two compelling rival influences, the architects of his youth.
These are his so-called aunts—imperious, strong-willed, ambitious—both determined to make the boy into their own heir, a believer in their values. In self-contained episodes, each set in an alpine grand hotel, we see one aunt and then the other seek to educate their protégé by imparting their experiences.
Serghiana, the ‘red princess’, is the daughter of a Soviet general, a producer of films and worshipper of art, a true believer. Ady, a former actress and singer, is a dilettante and cynic, Viennese, married to a great conductor: in her eyes, life is nothing but an affair of surfaces; truth and beauty are mere illusions.
The aunts and all those in their orbit are exiles, without a home, at the mercy of outside political events. They strive to see what lies beyond the chance events and intersections of their lives. Their allegiances shift. Their stories deepen: gradually the child comes to understand the shadows in their past.
Memory and nostalgia—the aunts’ gifts to him, gifts of obligation—are the purest expression of love allowed them. These stories stay with the boy, guiding his beliefs and his path in life, until he can grow up and absorb the influences of the world around him, and become himself.
Red Heaven is about the people who make us what we: how they come into our lives, instruct or affect us, then depart the stage. This fiction, with its affinity for the elusive beauties and sadnesses of the world, is Nicolas Rothwell’s finest achievement.
These are his so-called aunts—imperious, strong-willed, ambitious—both determined to make the boy into their own heir, a believer in their values. In self-contained episodes, each set in an alpine grand hotel, we see one aunt and then the other seek to educate their protégé by imparting their experiences.
Serghiana, the ‘red princess’, is the daughter of a Soviet general, a producer of films and worshipper of art, a true believer. Ady, a former actress and singer, is a dilettante and cynic, Viennese, married to a great conductor: in her eyes, life is nothing but an affair of surfaces; truth and beauty are mere illusions.
The aunts and all those in their orbit are exiles, without a home, at the mercy of outside political events. They strive to see what lies beyond the chance events and intersections of their lives. Their allegiances shift. Their stories deepen: gradually the child comes to understand the shadows in their past.
Memory and nostalgia—the aunts’ gifts to him, gifts of obligation—are the purest expression of love allowed them. These stories stay with the boy, guiding his beliefs and his path in life, until he can grow up and absorb the influences of the world around him, and become himself.
Red Heaven is about the people who make us what we: how they come into our lives, instruct or affect us, then depart the stage. This fiction, with its affinity for the elusive beauties and sadnesses of the world, is Nicolas Rothwell’s finest achievement.
- GenresBook Club
400 pages, Paperback
Published August 3, 2021
19 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
About the author
Nicolas Rothwell
18 books12 followersNicolas Rothwell is the award-winning author of Wings of the Kite-Hawk; The Red Highway, Journeys to the Interior and Another Country. He is the northern correspondent for The Australian.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 9, 2023
Winner 2022 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction
Red Heaven is the story of a boy’s journey into adulthood guided by his two guardians – two women who, although not blood relatives, are referred to as aunts. Written in the first person the novel begins in Switzerland in the 1960s and follows our unnamed narrator through various private schools, through the times spent with his aunts, and the intellectuals, artists, and others they introduce him to during their stays in the various grand hotels of Europe. The story is set against the backdrop of the Cold War with regular references to events in Soviet Russia, to the Prague Spring, the Vietnam War and more. It is, amongst other things, a story of relationships.
The first of the guardians is Great-Aunt Serghiana – the daughter of a Russian general, a film maker, a woman who worships art in many forms, who begins the novel teaching her ward about life through the 17th-century novel ‘The Princess of Cleves’. The second, Aunt Ady, is a former singer and actress, the wife of a world-famous conductor who appears more critical of artistic endeavour and its purpose.
The two aunts are, in many ways, the antithesis of each other, especially in their views on culture and its meaning. However, they have both chosen to care for our narrator, to teach and guide him, in their own way. And they are both, very much, emigres. “Exiles: adrift in the world.” As Serghiana impresses on our narrator: ‘Home? And where is that? Where? The place you were born? Where you were growing up? The country on your passport? My child, we’re hotel people – nomads, always moving, always with our suitcases packed and ready, always waiting for the knock on the door in the dead of night.’
Tightly woven into this theme of identity and home is the role of memory; the memories of people, and of the places associated with them, the influence they have, especially in our formative years, and the legacy they leave. As Serghiana strives to leave her mark, especially through her films, Ady chooses the narrator as her “memory child”. As she explains: ‘There are two deaths – for everyone. The first when we leave the world, and the second the real extinction – when the last person who remembers us and cares about us dies as well – and then the final trace of us is gone’.
I loved this book, but it was a roller coaster ride, an enormous challenge and I sometimes felt I fell short as my background knowledge was inadequate. It is a novel full of references to literature, art, artistic expression in its multiple forms, but also to Soviet policy, East Block events and although Rothwell does offer explanations within the text, I was grateful to be reading an eBook with instant look-ups when I wanted to know more. I loved the quality of the writing, but most of all I loved the characters, especially the two aunts living at the mercy of the political events of the period, stuck in “an airless world … drowning in memory; these people live through the wounds of the past; they are all damaged – they go forward looking back.”
This novel was a great read, but incredibly difficult to review and I am not surprised to see so many star ratings on Goodreads and yet so few comments – how do you capture its beauty and its essence in a few (inevitably inadequate) words.
Red Heaven is the story of a boy’s journey into adulthood guided by his two guardians – two women who, although not blood relatives, are referred to as aunts. Written in the first person the novel begins in Switzerland in the 1960s and follows our unnamed narrator through various private schools, through the times spent with his aunts, and the intellectuals, artists, and others they introduce him to during their stays in the various grand hotels of Europe. The story is set against the backdrop of the Cold War with regular references to events in Soviet Russia, to the Prague Spring, the Vietnam War and more. It is, amongst other things, a story of relationships.
The first of the guardians is Great-Aunt Serghiana – the daughter of a Russian general, a film maker, a woman who worships art in many forms, who begins the novel teaching her ward about life through the 17th-century novel ‘The Princess of Cleves’. The second, Aunt Ady, is a former singer and actress, the wife of a world-famous conductor who appears more critical of artistic endeavour and its purpose.
The two aunts are, in many ways, the antithesis of each other, especially in their views on culture and its meaning. However, they have both chosen to care for our narrator, to teach and guide him, in their own way. And they are both, very much, emigres. “Exiles: adrift in the world.” As Serghiana impresses on our narrator: ‘Home? And where is that? Where? The place you were born? Where you were growing up? The country on your passport? My child, we’re hotel people – nomads, always moving, always with our suitcases packed and ready, always waiting for the knock on the door in the dead of night.’
Tightly woven into this theme of identity and home is the role of memory; the memories of people, and of the places associated with them, the influence they have, especially in our formative years, and the legacy they leave. As Serghiana strives to leave her mark, especially through her films, Ady chooses the narrator as her “memory child”. As she explains: ‘There are two deaths – for everyone. The first when we leave the world, and the second the real extinction – when the last person who remembers us and cares about us dies as well – and then the final trace of us is gone’.
I loved this book, but it was a roller coaster ride, an enormous challenge and I sometimes felt I fell short as my background knowledge was inadequate. It is a novel full of references to literature, art, artistic expression in its multiple forms, but also to Soviet policy, East Block events and although Rothwell does offer explanations within the text, I was grateful to be reading an eBook with instant look-ups when I wanted to know more. I loved the quality of the writing, but most of all I loved the characters, especially the two aunts living at the mercy of the political events of the period, stuck in “an airless world … drowning in memory; these people live through the wounds of the past; they are all damaged – they go forward looking back.”
This novel was a great read, but incredibly difficult to review and I am not surprised to see so many star ratings on Goodreads and yet so few comments – how do you capture its beauty and its essence in a few (inevitably inadequate) words.
Read
November 11, 2022The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Red Heaven
‘An engrossing novel of ideas.’
Glyn Davis, ABR Books of the Year 2021
‘Outstanding…Romantic, dramatic, intelligent, cultured, enigmatic, cinematic…Rothwell walks alongside W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin and Teju Cole…[Red Heaven] made me feel alive as I read.’
Australian
‘Red Heaven is the account, rendered on a grand scale by the most exquisite and enigmatic figure in contemporary Australian literature, of how one boy grew out of his tangled inheritance and found his own.’
Saturday Paper
‘Nicolas Rothwell is exquisite, a writer whose work is hung with the insignia of the world’s art and literature. He is a cultivated writer…Red Heaven is a book that will fascinate the literary seeker.’
Peter Craven, SMH/Age
‘A work of genuine intellectual exploration, original and provocative.’
Australian Book Review
'Full of literary parallels, symbols and ideas rather than dramatic movement, Red Heaven stretches the boundaries of fiction.’
Historical Novel Society
‘Red Heaven is a dazzling novel for the ages…a novel that transcends time and place.’
Judges comments for the 2022 Prime Minister's Literary Awards
‘An engrossing novel of ideas.’
Glyn Davis, ABR Books of the Year 2021
‘Outstanding…Romantic, dramatic, intelligent, cultured, enigmatic, cinematic…Rothwell walks alongside W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin and Teju Cole…[Red Heaven] made me feel alive as I read.’
Australian
‘Red Heaven is the account, rendered on a grand scale by the most exquisite and enigmatic figure in contemporary Australian literature, of how one boy grew out of his tangled inheritance and found his own.’
Saturday Paper
‘Nicolas Rothwell is exquisite, a writer whose work is hung with the insignia of the world’s art and literature. He is a cultivated writer…Red Heaven is a book that will fascinate the literary seeker.’
Peter Craven, SMH/Age
‘A work of genuine intellectual exploration, original and provocative.’
Australian Book Review
'Full of literary parallels, symbols and ideas rather than dramatic movement, Red Heaven stretches the boundaries of fiction.’
Historical Novel Society
‘Red Heaven is a dazzling novel for the ages…a novel that transcends time and place.’
Judges comments for the 2022 Prime Minister's Literary Awards
May 22, 2022
I really wanted to love this book because it was set in the 1960s, and I’m usually interested in books set in that period, but I literally couldn’t finish this book. It was so boring and I couldn’t make it to the 200 page mark, the historical and political topics took up a majority of the book, and the main character and plot were hardly explored. This book put me in a reading slump and was overall very disappointing.
June 3, 2023
Long-winded, verbose and tedious.
September 14, 2021
want to but won’t tread the golden path for fear it will turn out to be brass
January 31, 2023
This was a really unusual book. I understand what some reviewers meant when they said it was hard to get into, but I decided to persist and felt it was worth it in the end. Some wonderful passages of writing, and interesting references to events and places I know very little about.
January 15, 2023
Nicholas Rothwell's novel-that-just-might-be-a-memoir Red Heaven is built around a host of absences.
Perhaps the most significant of these is the novel's nameless narrator, a boy or youth for most of the novel's duration, who is presented to us as a cipher almost devoid of agency. Unnervingly, for most of the book this narrator makes only the most perfunctory of contributions to the long succession of "conversations" that appear to constitute the body of the work. For much of the time, his only role is to insert wooden prompts that serve to prolong the opinionated monologues of the two so-called "great-aunts" who, for reasons never explained, have taken up the task of inducting him into the giddy mix of happiness and woe which, by their account, is the essence of the European cultural tradition.
The narrator's encounters with these "great-aunts" and their various hangers-on and functionaries take place principally in grand hotels in Switzerland and northern Italy, presumably during his school holidays. Absent from the novel are any details about the boy's life outside these periods —about his experiences of school, or of what, if anything, he knows of ordinary home life. We hear no mention of any father for the boy, while his mother is alluded to only glancingly as a figure unlikely ever to return from the distant place where she is now, apparently, located.
Some of the novel's moments of more intense feeling centre on encounters with absence also. One of these moments is experienced by one of the boy's "great-aunts" in the northern wastes of Russia, where she is struck vividly by a sense of the utter emptiness of the place. In another strong moment, a banker facing a black and white photograph, "a large square, bisected by a line dividing two fields of different greys", a "photograph of nothing", is brought to his knees, reduced to tears.
Over and over, the "great-aunts" who have taken it upon themselves to instruct the boy in what they appear to regard as The Meaning of Life seek to impress upon him how the very space he is occupying was once occupied by significant European cultural figures,. Almost every physical location the boy visits in Switzerland or northern Italy becomes associated with the absence of those figures.
So many absences. And filling this void, what have we?
Well, for much of the novel, an exceedingly tedious game of Middle European Cultural Trivial Pursuit, it seems to me. We are left with no option but to chase around after our narrator as he lands, seemingly at random, on a succession of Swiss and Northern Italian sites that call forth, from whichever of the two "great-aunts" or respective hanger-on happens to be holding the megaphone at the moment, some cutely inconsequential fact about this or that great historical or cultural figure who has some tangential connection with the place involved — Madame de Lafayette, Nietzsche, Freud, Raphael, Adorno, Rousseau, Bergman, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Wagner, Mahler, Mann, Durer, to drop just a small sample of such names — soon to be followed with fatuous aphorisms the like of "People change sometimes, when their circumstances change — or they come back to their true selves", or "Is it a trick? That's what all power is", or "Ideas are easy, and dangerous, and sterile", or "All true Europeans should be entranced by butterflies" or "Stories told to strangers are the best and richest" or "The places you love the most are the ones you leave". It doesn't help that the dialogue all sounds incredibly stilted, like some B grade movie version of how Europeans might speak English, and that there's so much sighing and wailing over how "being happy and knowing that your happiness is fleeting can lead you to the edge of despair" and how "Life and truth brings happiness — and pain."
Near the very end of the novel, a newly-introduced character expresses a strongly perjorative view about these "great-aunts" and their likely influence in forming the narrator's character that more or less matches the view that I, for one, had been forming in my own mind for more than 300 pages past — but by this point, I really felt I'd been dragged through the wringer for no very clear purpose at all.
A novel of ideas? More like a long, luke-warm bath in Weltschmerz for mine.
Perhaps the most significant of these is the novel's nameless narrator, a boy or youth for most of the novel's duration, who is presented to us as a cipher almost devoid of agency. Unnervingly, for most of the book this narrator makes only the most perfunctory of contributions to the long succession of "conversations" that appear to constitute the body of the work. For much of the time, his only role is to insert wooden prompts that serve to prolong the opinionated monologues of the two so-called "great-aunts" who, for reasons never explained, have taken up the task of inducting him into the giddy mix of happiness and woe which, by their account, is the essence of the European cultural tradition.
The narrator's encounters with these "great-aunts" and their various hangers-on and functionaries take place principally in grand hotels in Switzerland and northern Italy, presumably during his school holidays. Absent from the novel are any details about the boy's life outside these periods —about his experiences of school, or of what, if anything, he knows of ordinary home life. We hear no mention of any father for the boy, while his mother is alluded to only glancingly as a figure unlikely ever to return from the distant place where she is now, apparently, located.
Some of the novel's moments of more intense feeling centre on encounters with absence also. One of these moments is experienced by one of the boy's "great-aunts" in the northern wastes of Russia, where she is struck vividly by a sense of the utter emptiness of the place. In another strong moment, a banker facing a black and white photograph, "a large square, bisected by a line dividing two fields of different greys", a "photograph of nothing", is brought to his knees, reduced to tears.
Over and over, the "great-aunts" who have taken it upon themselves to instruct the boy in what they appear to regard as The Meaning of Life seek to impress upon him how the very space he is occupying was once occupied by significant European cultural figures,. Almost every physical location the boy visits in Switzerland or northern Italy becomes associated with the absence of those figures.
So many absences. And filling this void, what have we?
Well, for much of the novel, an exceedingly tedious game of Middle European Cultural Trivial Pursuit, it seems to me. We are left with no option but to chase around after our narrator as he lands, seemingly at random, on a succession of Swiss and Northern Italian sites that call forth, from whichever of the two "great-aunts" or respective hanger-on happens to be holding the megaphone at the moment, some cutely inconsequential fact about this or that great historical or cultural figure who has some tangential connection with the place involved — Madame de Lafayette, Nietzsche, Freud, Raphael, Adorno, Rousseau, Bergman, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Wagner, Mahler, Mann, Durer, to drop just a small sample of such names — soon to be followed with fatuous aphorisms the like of "People change sometimes, when their circumstances change — or they come back to their true selves", or "Is it a trick? That's what all power is", or "Ideas are easy, and dangerous, and sterile", or "All true Europeans should be entranced by butterflies" or "Stories told to strangers are the best and richest" or "The places you love the most are the ones you leave". It doesn't help that the dialogue all sounds incredibly stilted, like some B grade movie version of how Europeans might speak English, and that there's so much sighing and wailing over how "being happy and knowing that your happiness is fleeting can lead you to the edge of despair" and how "Life and truth brings happiness — and pain."
Near the very end of the novel, a newly-introduced character expresses a strongly perjorative view about these "great-aunts" and their likely influence in forming the narrator's character that more or less matches the view that I, for one, had been forming in my own mind for more than 300 pages past — but by this point, I really felt I'd been dragged through the wringer for no very clear purpose at all.
A novel of ideas? More like a long, luke-warm bath in Weltschmerz for mine.
Read
April 8, 2024I took a long time to read this book, not because it wasn’t a good read, but because I kept putting it down for library book deadlines, misplacing it and otherwise getting distracted. It doesn’t feel particularly plot driven, so there was no problem dipping in and out of it after extended intervals in other books.
The whole thing has a slightly dreamy feel to the narration, perhaps because it is essentially a book about memory, and for a similar reason none of the characters felt entirely real or immediate to me. The long dialogues and descriptions felt cinematic, distant, and like there was always a good chunk of the story hidden or unspoken. It was beautifully written, and I enjoyed following the characters, though I never felt like I got close to them or completely understood them.
The whole thing has a slightly dreamy feel to the narration, perhaps because it is essentially a book about memory, and for a similar reason none of the characters felt entirely real or immediate to me. The long dialogues and descriptions felt cinematic, distant, and like there was always a good chunk of the story hidden or unspoken. It was beautifully written, and I enjoyed following the characters, though I never felt like I got close to them or completely understood them.
August 27, 2025
I could not finish the last 100 or so pages.
In the episode “Kicking Up A Stink” (S3E4) of Kath & Kim, Kath and Kel star in a community theatre performance “The Hours”. When reading the reviews of opening night in the local newspaper, which describes the performance as “utter drivel”, Kel asks if “execrable” is good. Utter drivel, execrable are the words I would use to describe this book.
Sorry.
In the episode “Kicking Up A Stink” (S3E4) of Kath & Kim, Kath and Kel star in a community theatre performance “The Hours”. When reading the reviews of opening night in the local newspaper, which describes the performance as “utter drivel”, Kel asks if “execrable” is good. Utter drivel, execrable are the words I would use to describe this book.
Sorry.
March 10, 2022
A fascinating novel of ideas, set in Switzerland mainly, but elsewhere through Europe as well, from the 1960s to the 1990s. It feels somewhat anachronistic, almost like a novel by Musil, and feels very unlike a contemporary novel by an Australian author. It inhabits a world of money and boarding schools and Cold War intrigues (Rothwell attended boarding schools in Switzerland and France and was a former foreign correspondent).
January 12, 2023
Brilliant writer but too much detail for me and it did not hold my interest. I skimmed it a lot.
April 24, 2023
A difficult book to read. Not that it was a difficult subject, just one of those books that I don't feel like picking up, or that I need to force myself to read for a period of time to get into it. In fact, I was forced to return it to the library when I was only half-way through because I read it so slowly and then had to wait for it to be available again.
So what's it about? It focuses mostly on the childhood of a Czech boy who seemed to be raised by two family friends who he called 'Aunts' during the 60s and the cold war. It's never clear where his mother is.
These women tried to imprint their ideas and memories on him when he visits in his holidays from various boarding schools, to help them live on in his memory.
Then it flips to him as an adult journalist in the late 80s, early 90s as the USSR was losing its grip and the eastern countries were gaining their independence. He is back in the parts of Europe he spent time in with the Aunts and his memories come flooding back, he meets people he knew as a child, who remind him of those times.
I can't say I particularly liked the book, but I didn't dislike it either. It was just a lot of work for little reward.
So what's it about? It focuses mostly on the childhood of a Czech boy who seemed to be raised by two family friends who he called 'Aunts' during the 60s and the cold war. It's never clear where his mother is.
These women tried to imprint their ideas and memories on him when he visits in his holidays from various boarding schools, to help them live on in his memory.
Then it flips to him as an adult journalist in the late 80s, early 90s as the USSR was losing its grip and the eastern countries were gaining their independence. He is back in the parts of Europe he spent time in with the Aunts and his memories come flooding back, he meets people he knew as a child, who remind him of those times.
I can't say I particularly liked the book, but I didn't dislike it either. It was just a lot of work for little reward.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews