A new personal memoir about Zina Rachevsky, the international socialite and film actress, of distant Tsarist lineage, who gave it all up in 1968 to seek enlightenment with a Buddhist master. Cossetted by wealth and privilege from birth, appearing in a dozen movies in the 1950s, she regularly made headlines with her wild adventures as Princess Zina, Hollywood starlet. After marrying briefly at 18, she became Countess d’Harcourt, before later meeting and marrying film director Conrad Rooks. This first-hand account by a writer who spent time with her tells the story of her final (earthly) incarnation as Anila Thubten Chang Chub Palmo, a Gelug Tibetan Buddhist nun who took vows from Trijang Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India. Zina died after a short illness in 1973, aged 42, in a spartan room in a monastery in Nepal.
