Overview

'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 the over-harvested countryside, and any deviation from Moscow-dictated ideology is punished by disappearance. When Samuel is sentenced to ten years' hard labour, Deborah 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 - and 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.

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"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 *"

"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 *"

Author Information

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.

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