Product Description
by Yaroslav Trofimov (Author)
'No Country for Love is Doctor Zhivago meets Stalingrad - a mix of romantic historical fiction and gritty, reportage-like storytelling... The history is spot-on, going from pre-Communist times, through World War II, to the era of Stalin and after. And the stories it tells of the human heart, through the eyes of its heroine Debora Rosenbaum and those who befriend or betray her, are unforgettable' NPR Best Books of 2024
'A captivating sweep of a novel about love, resilience and impossible choices' Christina Lamb, chief foreign correspondent Sunday Times Seventeen-year-old Debora Rosenbaum, ambitious and in love with literature, arrives in the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kharkiv, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; 1930 is a new dawn, the Soviet era, where skyscrapers go up overnight. Debora finds work and meets a dashing young officer named Samuel who is training to become a fighter pilot. They fall in love, and begin to mix with Ukraine's new cultural elite. But Debora's prospects - and Ukraine's - soon dim. State-induced famine rolls through the over-harvested countryside, and any deviation from Moscow-dictated ideology is punished by disappearance. When Samuel is sentenced to ten years' hard labour, Debora is left on her own with a baby. And this is only the beginning. As advancing Nazi armies move through Ukraine during World War II, its yellow fields of wheat run red with blood. Forced to renounce the man she loves, her identity and even her name, Debora also learns to endure, manipulate and resist. No Country for Love follows the hard choices Debora makes as Ukraine, caught between two totalitarian ideologies, turns into the deadliest place in the world - while she tries to protect those she loves most. A sweeping, stunningly ambitious novel about a young Ukrainian girl arriving in Kharkiv in 1930, determined to contribute to the future of her country, and her struggle to survive the devastation and trauma that ravage Ukraine. No Country for Love follows the hard choices Debora makes as Ukraine, caught between two totalitarian ideologies, turns into the deadliest place in the world - while she tries to protect those she loves most. A sweeping, stunningly ambitious novel about a young Ukrainian girl arriving in Kharkiv in 1930, determined to contribute to the future of her country, and her struggle to survive the devastation and trauma that ravage Ukraine.Back Jacket
'A beautiful, important and timely rendering of Jewish life in Ukraine through the travails of the 20th century. Both historical and page-turning' Gary Shteyngart
'No Country for Love gives us the story of the country's painful twentieth century as a sweeping romantic epic' Hari Kunzru 'A chilling account of what it means to live under a totalitarian regime . . . an exquisite and enduring tale of survival, courage, and resistance' Nguyen Phan Que Mai 'An expansive novel reminiscent of the literary breadth, the humanity, and the historical density found in Vassili Grossman's Life and Fate' Christophe Boltanski, winner of the 2015 Femina Prize for La Cache 'Tough, lean, and unsentimental, No Country for Love is a powerful moral testament that reads like a thriller' James HynesAuthor Biography
Yaroslav Trofimov was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and, after a childhood in Madagascar and adolescence in New York, has worked all over the world for the Wall Street Journal, where he serves as the chief foreign-affairs correspondent. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2022 and in 2023, among many other honours, he is one of the pre-eminent war correspondents of our time and the author of three books of narrative non-fiction. This is his first novel.
