Monique Raphel High

Monique Raphel High was a Franco-American author. She was born in New York City on May 3, 1949 and died on March 12, 2017.

Monique Raphel High

Family life

High was the only daughter of French parents who had emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazi invasion in Europe. Her father, film executive David Raphel, is the grandson of Baron David de Günzburg. When she was only a few months old, her parents returned to Europe, where she was raised in Paris, Rome and Amsterdam.

While High was a teenager, her mother worked in the PR department of Columbia films and as an agent for the Alain Bernheim Literary Agency. She represented James Jones and Irwin Shaw.

As a child, High did research for Jules Dassin.

Monique’s father, film executive David Raphel, is the son of Baroness Sonia (Sofia Sara) de Gunzburg, and grandson of Baron David de Günzburg, whose family was ennobled by Tsar Alexander II and is considered among the most notable Jewish dynasties in the world. Baron David, for whom Monique’s father was named, was a renowned scholar, whose library ranked second among the private libraries in existence, with the King of England’s the only larger library of the day. This library, full of rare books and manuscripts dating back to the Middle Ages, was seized in 1917 by the Bolsheviks, and is now exhibited in Russia by the government of Vladimir Putin.

High married Robert Duncan High, her Yale sweetheart, an advertising executive, in 1969, the day of the Senior Prom. Their daughter, Nathalie Danielle Carroll, was born in Chicago in 1972. They were divorced in 1981.

She married Soviet psychiatrist/psychologist Grigorii Raiport in 1985. He was the sports psychologist for the U.S. Olympic Team, and defected in 1976. They co-wrote Red Gold. They divorced in 1987.

High married Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Ben Walter Pesta, II, in 1987. They were married until his death in July 2014.

High lived in Westwood, CA and is worked on her newest novel, a courtroom drama.

High died on March 12, 2017 after a period of illness.

Published work

Fiction

• The Four Winds of Heaven, 1980. Based on the life of Monique's grandmother, Russian Baroness Sonia de Gunzburg, this riches-to-rags-to-riches odyssey takes a family from pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg, through desperate times on the front during World War I and in the Crimea during the Revolution, to post-revolutionary Paris.
• Encore, a love triangle linking a Russian prima ballerina, an artist, and the bisexual backer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as the illustrious troupe travels through Europe (1905–1927).
• The Eleventh Year, love, culture, politics in Paris during the Roaring Twenties. Two French brothers, one exiled Russian princess, and two expatriate American women find their lives inextricably entangled in a web of deceit, ambition and greed. This is a novel of redemption.
• The Keeper of the Walls, a Holocaust story taking place in Paris, Vienna and Auschwitz. Parisian Lily Bruisson is torn between an expatriate Russian Prince and an American journalist as her city is besieged and her identity is called into question.
• Thy Father's House, a multi-generational saga chronicling the rising fortunes and disastrous love affairs of a banking family in Russia, Paris and Vienna, from 1900-1950.
• Between Two Worlds, a love triangle beginning in pre-revolutionary Russia, takes the reader through Paris, Biarritz, New York and ends up in Hollywood. Zica, daughter of a Muscovite lord, is betrayed by her lover, Kyril, and rescued during the Revolution by her servant, Yakov. In America, both men are lured to Hollywood, and Zica is forced to make a choice that will alter all their lives.

Nonfiction

• Red Gold, co-authored with Dr. Grigori Raiport. Techniques of Soviet psychology before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Monique is also the co-writer of the French film Flagrant Désir, June 1986 (issued in its English-speaking version as "Trade Secrets"), with Sam Waterston and Lauren Hutton. Directed by Claude Faraldo.