A strong debut novel about Stalin’s atrocities and the importance of memories.

The novel, which tells about five generations, intertwines the persecution of Stalin, the childhood of Uzbekistan and the everyday life of immigrants. In 1936, Yuri celebrates his fifth birthday in Leningrad without knowing that by the end of the summer, his world would fall apart. There is a knock on the door at night, and men in grey uniforms take his father away. Soon his mother is imprisoned as well. Yuri and his sister stay with their grandparents, but when the grandparents pass away the children are sent to an orphanage in distant Uzbekistan. After the siege of Leningrad, the siblings stand at the door of their Leningrad home and learn that as children of enemies of the state they have no future in Soviet Union. The tenacious Yuri still struggles forward and has a family with whom he moves to Finland after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Immigrant life is full of ups and downs, but Yuri can never let go of his past. He has to find out what really happened to his parents. A search that will eventually take him to the mass graves of Sandarmokh. Soudakova’s magnificent and melancholic novel depicts the life of Yuri and his descendants from 1936 to the present day.

The gloom of life under the Stalinist regime and the dull greyness of socialism are in complete conflict with its ideals. Soudakova’s fine poetic language makes the contradiction feel even more severe. The cruelty of power, the fragility of humanity, and the thirst for life go hand in hand in an episodically progressive narrative. The pines of Sandarmokh see extreme horror but also almost touch the sky.