The Star of Kazan

Written by Eva Ibbotson

Narrated by Ruth Jones

Read by actress Ruth Jones, Eva Ibbotson's hugely entertaining The Star of Kazan is a timeless classic for listeners young and old.

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.

And sure enough, one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door. After years of guilt and searching, Annika's mother has come to claim her daughter, who is in fact a Prussian aristocrat whose true home is a great castle. But at crumbling, spooky Spittal, Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her new-found family . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: May 2, 2008
• ISBN: 9780230713369

Eva Ibbotson

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925 and moved to England with her father when the Nazis came into power. Ibbotson wrote more than twenty books for children and young adults, many of which garnered nominations for major awards for children's literature in the UK, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Whitbread Prize. Eva's critically acclaimed Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Gold Medal in 2001. Set in the Amazon, it was written in honour of her deceased husband Alan, a former naturalist. Imaginative and humorous, Eva's books often convey her love of nature, in particular the Austrian countryside, which is evident in works such as The Star Of Kazan and A Song For Summer. Eva passed away at her home in Newcastle on October 20th 2010. Her final book, One Dog and His Boy, was published in May 2011.

Reviews for The Star of Kazan

[Pat Guillen · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The recording ends mid-story, very disappointing! Good narrator, wish it was complete

[Kate · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It is a very captivating story…but I was disappointed because I remember listening to this story before, many years ago…and this seems to have chopped off the end. It didn’t come to a satisfying conclusion like I remembered. This story ends at Chapter 50, where 2 of the professors and Ellie go to visit Annika. But I can also faintly remember that there should have been a piece about them rescuing her, because when they found her she had been locked into a boarding school or something. It’s still a great story. Maybe you won’t mind as much as me if you’re hearing it for the first time.