Zoya

Zoya is a romance novel by the American writer Danielle Steel, published in 1988 by Delacorte Press. It was her twenty-third novel.

The book follows Zoya from the last years of imperial Russia through the First World War and the revolution, and then into exile. She leaves St Petersburg with her grandmother and a loyal retainer, reaching Paris with no money and a name that is now a liability, and she joins Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as a dancer. Steel carries her through the decades that follow, including the Second World War, marriages, losses and a move to the United States, so the novel is a life story told at speed rather than a single courtship. The historical events provide the pressure at each stage, and the heroine's response to losing her position is the constant of the book.

Steel had published steadily since the early 1970s and this novel is one of the historical ones among her large output, set in Russia, France and America. Its span is the point of the book: the reader follows one woman from a court to a rented room and out again.