High was the only daughter of French parents who had emigrated there to escape the Nazi invasion in Europe. Her father, film executive David Raphel, is the son of Baroness Sofia Sara de Günzburg, and the grandson of Baron David de Günzburg, who had been the personal translator to Tsar Nicolas II. He spoke 32 languages and dialects, and in the early part of the twentieth century, before the Russian Revolution, owned the third largest private library in the world in Saint Petersburg.
Baron David’s father, Horace de Gunzburg, received the title of nobility from Grand-Duke Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1871, which the Tsar later on extended to Horace’s father, Ossip, and to Horace’s brothers and heirs. Horace was a reputed philanthropist, especially known for helping Jewish causes. He founded International ORT. Baron David’s younger brother, Baron Dimitri de Günzburg, known as Brza or Brzusha to his intimates, was Serge Diaghilev’s chief patron. He served as the basis for the character of Boris in Monique’s novel Encore. The Günzburg family has many noted relatives, including the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who is married to one of Monique’s father’s cousins.
Baroness Sofia de Günzburg, “Sonia,” married Moissei Zlatopolsky, known as “Mossia” to his intimates, an entrepreneur from Kiev and Moscow, who had settled with his family in Paris after the Revolution. His father, Hillel, was a noted Zionist . When they married, it was thought to be a great match, although the Günzburgs were believers in the Diaspora and defiantly not Zionists. Mossia’s sister was the Israeli stateswoman Shoshana Persitz. Hillel’s brutal murder in 1932 by an employee plunged the family into ruin, and some time later, Mossia left for Palestine. Young David, Monique’s father, was left to care for his grandmother, his mother and his sister.
During World War II, Sonia hid numerous Jewish families in Paris, and, refusing to wear the yellow star, walked all over the city, weighing only eighty pounds, to feed these people . David managed to get the family out by train to the safer unoccupied zone, and cycled to join them. He was fifteen years old. He passed his Baccalaureate and left for New York at the age of seventeen.
Monique’s mother Dina had a younger brother, film director Hubert Cornfield. Hubert helped Monique establish a visual eye when writing scenes in her novels.
While Monique 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, Monique did research for Jules Dassin.
Her grandparents were friends with Prince Peter and Princess Irene of Greece, the cousins of King Paul of Greece .
Monique 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 after a year’s separation .
She married Soviet psychiatrist/psychologist Grigorii Raiport in 1985. He was the sports psychologist for the U.S. Olympic Team, and defected in 1976 amidst much notoriety. They co-wrote Red Gold. They divorced in 1987. He is deceased .
Monique married Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Ben Walter Pesta, II, in 1987 ;..
Monique was reared in Paris, Rome and Amsterdam, and obtained her B.A. in 1969 from Barnard College with a dual degree in English and Renaissance Studies. She studied under such noted professors as Shakespearean expert Remington Patterson and Italian author and historian Maristella Lorch , with whom she also went to Florence to complete her education with the Sarah Lawrence program abroad. Monique speaks English and French, but also Spanish, Italian and Rumanian. Her Russian has slipped since Grigorii’s death.
The Four Winds of Heaven , National Bestseller, 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. Dr. Raiport, late husband of Monique Raphel High, was the sports psychologist for the 1976 Olympic Team from the Soviet Union.
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 .
Monique has taught creative writing at the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program (1997—1998), then started her own tutorials and seminars. She became first a coach and literary manager, calling her firm WriteHigh Literary Management, then turned the company into an international literary agency with offices in New York and Beverly Hills. It was named the WriteHigh Literary Agency. Susan Chin worked with her as co-agent in Beverly Hills, and Peter Cauthorn Jaeger ran the Manhattan office. In December 2008, they closed the firm so that Peter and Monique could return to their writing projects. Susan is doing research for Monique’s current novel, Yearbook.
High is currently represented by Mel Berger of William Morris-Endeavor, LLC.
Monique has been active in defense of abused women, and during the 1980s, served on the Board of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women. She also wrote for Court Watch, a Lost Angeles organization that walked abused women through the court system.
While a young woman living in Pasadena with her first husband, she was active in the Alliance Française, and even served one term as secretary.
She has been also been devoted to her Alma Mater, Barnard College [1]. The year after she graduated, she formed the first Cincinnati Barnard regional Club and served as its first President. She then became active in the Chicago regional club several years later. In 2004, she became Class Vice President and Reunion Chair, putting together, with a terrific committee from her graduating class, a Fortieth Reunion in June 2009. The event received much praise. She is also a Barnard Alumna Area Representative, a group which interviews applicants and welcomes them to Barnard, and has been active as a Mentor to students and alumnae in the publishing field since 1999.
Monique’s current book, Yearbook, focuses on four young women who come together their freshman year at Barnard in 1965...the same year Monique and her friends did. Although it is fiction, the novel is very much based on true reminiscences. It takes the story through the Fortieth Reunion.
