 Banine emigrated to France in 1923 following her father, a former minister in the government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (December 1918-April 1920).She moved to Istanbul where she abandoned her husband whom she had been forced to marry at the age of fifteen and then fled to Paris.There, after many years, literary acquaintances, including Henry de Montherlant, Nikos Kazantzakis, and André Malraux urged her to publish.