PRIZES to win! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

No Country for Love

'an unflinching look at the cost of survival in terrible circumstances' The Times

Yaroslav Trofimov

$49.99

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Abacus
10 December 2024
'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.
By:  
Imprint:   Abacus
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 236mm,  Width: 162mm,  Spine: 34mm
Weight:   626g
ISBN:   9780349145310
ISBN 10:   0349145318
Pages:   384
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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.

Reviews for No Country for Love: 'an unflinching look at the cost of survival in terrible circumstances' The Times

"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, author of Our Country Friends and Super Sad True Love Story * 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 * James Hynes, author of Next and Sparrow * 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 Vassili Grossman's Life and Fate * Christophe Boltanski, winner of the 2015 Femina Prize for La Cache *"


See Also