Description

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This novel is a major literary discovery, and Odrach is drawing favorable comparisons with such eminent writers as Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn. Odrach wrote in Ukrainian, while living an exile's life in Toronto. This remarkable book is a microcosm of Soviet history, and Odrach provides a first-hand account of events during the Stalinist era that newsreels never covered. It has special value as a sensitive and realistic portrait of the times, while capturing the internal drama of the characters with psychological concision. Odrach creates a powerful and moving picture, and manages to show what life was really like under the brutal dictatorship of Stalin, and brings cataclysmic events of history to a human scale.

About the Author

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Theodore Odrach was born in 1912 in Belarus then a part of the Russian Empire. With the Bolshevik invasion of 1939, he escaped to the West and eventually immigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he wrote novels and short stories. Theodore Odrach died in 1964.

Praise For…

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"[This] delightfully sardonic novel about the Stalinist occupation of Belarus... is rich with history, horror and comedy." — Publishers Weekly