The story of the deportation of Romanians from Bucovina to the steppes of Siberia, an exercise in historical memory and a powerful story of maintaining humanity in impossible conditions.
A new novel from Liliana Corobca and her translator Monica Cure, winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld translation prize.
Ana is eleven when the Soviet soldiers send her from Bucovina, Romania, to Kazakhstan. She is just one of many forced to leave behind her home and make the three week long journey via train. The trip is a harsh, humiliating one, but in spite of the cold and the closeness of death, life persists in the boxcar in the form of storytelling, riddles, and ritual. Years later, Ana recalls her childhood for her great granddaughter, who is considering moving her to a nursing home. Her story, told with unflinching candor, is a chronicle of a life lived during a time of great political and national change, a story of an existence defined and...
