''An expansive novel reminiscent of the literary breadth, humanity, and historical depth found in Vasily Grossman''s Life and Fate'' Christophe Boltanski, winner of the 2015 Prix Femina for The Safe House
''A captivating sweep of a novel about love, resilience and impossible choices... I loved it!'' 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, 1930, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; it''s 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
