Bøger af Victoria Belim

"In 2014, the landmarks of Victoria Belim's personal geography were plunged into tumult at the hands of Russia. Her hometown Kyiv was gripped by protests and violent suppression. Crimea, where she'd once been sent to school to avoid radiation from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, was invaded. Kharkiv, where her grandmother Valentina studied economics and fell in love; Donetsk, where her father once worked; and Mariupol, where she and her mother bought a cherry tree for Valentina's garden all became battlegrounds. A naturalized American citizen then living in Brussels, Belim felt she had to go back. She had to spend time with her aging grandmother and her cousin Dima. She had to unravel a family mystery spanning several generations. And she needed to understand how her country's tragic history of communist revolution, civil war, famine, world war, totalitarianism, and fraught independence had changed the course of their lives. The Rooster House is a beautifully written memoir of a family, a country's past, and its dangerous present. It is about parents and children, true believers and victims, gardens and art, secrets and tragedy. Compulsively readable, deeply moving, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, it is a stunning debut book by an experienced, expressive, and gifted writer"--

I 2014 vender Victoria tilbage til et krigsramt Ukraine for at finde ud af mere om sin bedstemors onkel Nykodym, som på mystisk vis forsvandt i 1930’erne. Hvad skete der med ham under krigen? Hvordan ved familien så lidt om hans skæbne, og hvorfor forbyder bedstemoren, Valentyna, Victoria at grave i fortiden? I Poltava i Ukraine, familiens hjemstavn, er KGB for længst fordrevet. Men minderne forbliver, og den tidligere hovedkvartersbygning med de årvågne røde sirener – i byen kendt som “Hanehuset” – får stadig de lokale til at skælve. ‘De røde sirener’ er en gribende fortælling om Ukraines historie i det tyvende århundrede gennem udforskningen af en familie i fire generationer, hvor en hemmelighed ligger gemt i hjertet af familiens historie.