‘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.
‘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.
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Reviews
Tough, lean, and unsentimental, No Country for Love is a powerful moral testament that reads like a thriller, as its impressive heroine learns to do what is necessary, day by day, in order to endure one of the most harrowing passages of the 20th century. It is also an unsparing account of the tribulations of ordinary Ukrainians, from the Holomodor, through the horrors of World War II, to the death of Stalin. By turns terrifying, tender, and inspiring, this gripping and necessary novel illuminates the origins of a story whose latest chapters are being played out before the world even today
A chilling account of what it means to live under a totalitarian regime. With the sharp pen of an award-winning journalist and the tender heart of a poet, Yaroslav Trofimov has woven an exquisite and enduring tale of survival, courage, and resistance. Epic yet intimate, heart-breaking yet hopeful, terrifying yet inspiring, No Country for Love is a love letter to Ukraine and a gift to anyone who appreciates peace
A beautiful, important and timely rendering of Jewish life in Ukraine through the travails of the 20th century. Both historical and page-turning
Trofimov... brings a journalist's keen eye to the story: telling details make the action compelling throughout. Debora is an engaging, tenacious protagonist, and even minor characters are convincingly drawn... Rendering Ukraine's bloodsoaked landscape with sensitivity, as Mr Trofimov has done, does a service both to the victims of those terrible historical events and to the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russia now to preserve their country's freedom. This, says the book between its lines, is what Ukrainians have endured; these are the awful compromises they had to make in the past; and this is why they so loathe and fear their enemy
Through the saga of a Jewish Ukrainian family unfolding from the 1930's until the post war, Yaroslav Trofimov delivers a literary epic taking place on the "bloodlands" - to borrow the title from Timothy Snyder's book - scarred from the Nazi and Stalinist atrocities. It is an expansive novel reminiscent of the literary breath, the humanity, and the historical density found in Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate
In contrast to typical Western-oriented stories set in the Soviet Union, No Country for Love offers the reader a more realistic portrayal by addressing the complex linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversity often overlooked by other storytellers in favor of a simplified, reductive view of the region as being uniformly "Russian"... Debora is repeatedly forced to sacrifice her own needs and desires over the years, making unimaginable choices to safeguard the lives of her children. Yet, Trofimov navigates such moments with a profound respect for his protagonist
At a time when many people are scrambling to understand Ukraine, No Country for Love gives us the story of the country's painful twentieth century as a sweeping romantic epic. It links the personal and the political in a way that cuts through wartime propaganda, restoring both human scale and moral complexity.
Debora's story bears witness to the horrors of war and of Stalinism, and she struggles with impossible moral choices she has to make to keep herself and her family alive. At one point her mother writes a consoling letter to her: "We are up against history. History is a wild and bloodthirsty animal... All you can do is try to be invisible. Invisible to survive." This debut by Yaroslav Trofimov, a Kyiv-born foreign correspondent for the Wall St Journal, is an unflinching look at the cost of survival in terrible circumstances, which has sad echoes in modern-day Ukraine
A captivating sweep of a novel about love, resilience and impossible choices in a Ukraine caught between Soviets and Nazism and riven by war - I loved it!