The Oligarch's Daughter

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and illness.

Paul is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. When the novel begins, he has been living under an assumed name, Grant Anderson, after fleeing a dangerous past. He stole that name and identity from a comatose patient at his uncle Thomas’s long-term care facility.

Paul had a difficult childhood. His mother died from cancer when he was a teenager, and soon after, his father decided to live off the grid in the wilderness. Paul chose not to join his father and spent the rest of his teenage years with Thomas, sharing a close bond with his uncle and cousins. Despite lacking a traditional family structure, he values family relationships. He learned boatbuilding form his uncle and became “an excellent craftsman of wooden boats” (11), a skill that serves him well during the five years he spends in a small New Hampshire town as Grant.

Paul is resourceful and adept at surviving difficulty. This is evident in his ability to adopt a false identity and live without detection for half a decade. He never contacts anyone from his old life despite his loneliness, which speaks to the theme of