Red Sky at Noon cover art

Red Sky at Noon

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Red Sky at Noon

By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Narrated by: Simon Bubb
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Red Sky at Noon by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

'The black earth was already baking, and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire....'

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He joins the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a desperate mission behind enemy lines.

Switching between Benya's war in the grasslands of Southern Russia and Stalin's plans in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a journalist also on the Eastern Front, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery and human survival, where personal betrayal is a constant companion and death just a heartbeat away.

©2017 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2017 Random House Audiobooks Action & Adventure Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Military Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Thriller & Suspense War & Military Fiction Russia War Stalin Heartfelt Cavalry

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Girl Who Fought Napoleon cover art
Nocturne cover art
Empires of Sand cover art
Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko cover art
The Summer Palace cover art
The Witch of Napoli cover art
Legend cover art
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde cover art
North and South cover art
The Last Restaurant in Paris cover art
Lovely War cover art
Legion of the Damned cover art
Eagles at War cover art
On the Devil's Tail cover art
Guns of the Dawn cover art

Critic reviews

"A master storyteller - his fiction is compelling." ( GQ)
"A natural storyteller who brings his encycolopedic knowledge of Russian history to life in language that glitters like the ice of St Petersburg." ( Washington Post)
All stars
Most relevant
An incredibly moving novel, in the style of the great Russian authors, set during the worst years of the Great Patriotic War. Brilliant!

Red Sky at Night

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Montefiore is one of the best writers with the propensity to weave credible fictional characters into factual situations allowing them to rub shoulders with some of the most disreputable creatures of WW2. The juxtaposition of the egregious machinations of Stalin and his outrageous treatment of innocent people alongside the impossible, impassioned and illicit affaires de coeur, toys with reader's sense of outrage, injustice, empathy and compassion in equal measures throughout the novel.
Although the reader was easy to listen to, it was a shame that he was unable to (or chose not to, maybe?) use Russian accents for the characters. As this is the final book of Montefiore's trilogy and the previous readers managed the Russian accents admirably, it was disappointing to hear Stalin "speak" with a broad northern accent... and it took a while to think of him as the same character as in the previous two books!
However, that apart, this is an excellent audiobook ... very highly recommended!

Another brilliant Montefiore!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
great book but why were the Russians speaking in West Country and Northern accents sometimes with a touch of East end? Simon Bubb made Stalin and co sound ridiculous

Simon Bubbs accents

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What i love most about audible is when taking a chance on an author/novel and being moved by what you've listened to.This audible fits into that catagory.

A great listen.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very good, gripping storyline, shows many aspects of the eastern front with a cleverly interwoven love plot. superb narration and consitent accents makes an easy listen. I would highly recommend a sequal tieing up some loose ends

brilliant book, very well narrated

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews