![]() ![]() They chronicle the complex relations between their fathers and Stalin, which shaped so much of our present. Beautifully researched, it’s the story of the 1945 Yalta Conference as told by three young women-Kathleen Harriman, Sarah Churchill, and Anna Roosevelt. The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz. It will remind me of an extraordinary country I traveled to just before its latest descent into the deepest noir. Reality overtakes fiction these days, but after the NATO summit in Madrid, I plan to read Addis Ababa Noir, a collection of stories edited by Maaza Mengiste. Oana Lungescu Principal spokesperson for NATO Natalia Vorozhbyt’s film Bad Roads explores the behind the scenes of the frontline, focusing on civilians’-especially women’s-experiences of the war. Valentyn Vasianovych’s Atlantis is a very dark, dystopian exploration of a ruined Donbas in the future, after a Ukrainian victory. Roman Bondarchuk’s Volcano is a sort of absurdly humorous, slightly fantastical, almost mythical treatment of the topic. There have been some superb films made about the war in Ukraine over recent years. Joseph Roth is one of my favourite writers, in part because he is a writer of Ukraine-he was from Brody, Galicia, and studied in Lviv, and that northeastern Habsburg borderland often features in his work.Īrtem Chekh’s Absolute Zero is a very sensitive and thoroughly non-idealised account of the author’s frontline service as a conscript in the Ukrainian army. Reilly Costigan-Humas and Isaac Stockhouse-Wheeler, a gripping journey through an occupied Donbas city, and Andrei Kurkov’s Grey Bees, which explores the “grey zones” of the war in both the physical and metaphorical senses, and takes the reader on a journey from Donbas to Crimea. I would also recommend Serhiy Zhadan’s The Orphanage, translated by. ![]() The book follows the fate of five children born on the same day in Donetsk in 1986, including their differing reactions to Russia’s occupation of parts of Donbas in 2014. Olena Stiazhkina is originally from Donetsk and is one of the best literary guides to Donbas and the complex background to the war. Olena Stiazhkina’s Cecil the Lion’s Death Made Sense. Uilleam Blacker Associate professor in Comparative Culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London As ever, Reacher pulls through with panache, an affair, and luck, only to hit the road again. Lee Child’s Tripwire, published over twenty years ago, which I just read is, well, pretty brutal. My nephew nearly disowned me when I told him what I was reading… Shostakovich wrote them for Nikolayeva between 19 after he heard her play and win the Bach Competition, where she performed Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. Tatiana Nikolayeva playing Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. Don’t underestimate the immense cultural and historical gulfs between today's Western and Eastern Europe. Blacker’s chapter on victimhood and martyrdom is essential for understanding how history and occupation are intrinsic to Poland and Ukraine’s views of the world. Memories of an earlier life were suppressed or distorted. Blacker’s analyses about identity, competing narratives, selective memory, and what it means to move into another culture-even occupying someone else’s home-are impressive. The backdrop is the post-1945 years when millions of people across East Central Europe were displaced, expelled, or forced to flee. Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe: The Ghosts of Others by Uilleam Blacker. Unlike his brother, Heinrich, Mann consistently ducked the big issue: the role and responsibility of the writer, more relevant than ever in today’s unsettling political landscape. For his own egocentric reasons, Mann wanted to believe the Germans were too sane to believe in or support Hitler. Verging on biography and fiction, Tóibín pulls no punches about Thomas Mann’s deceit and his disdain for the status quo (up to a point). Judy Dempsey Editor, Strategic Europe, Carnegie Europe
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