The Memory Keeper of Kyiv: The most powerful, important historical novel of 2022

Product Information

The characters in the present day story are linked to the characters in the past by a discovered journal telling of the hardships suffered in the past. Dochters van Kiev' is een zeer meeslepend, emotioneel en heftig verhaal. En het is zo verdrietig dat dit land en zijn bewoners nu weer iets verschrikkelijks meemaakt... Ik zou dit boek zeker op je lijstje zetten om te lezen! Seventy years later, a young widow discovers her grandmother’s journal, one that will reveal the long-buried secrets of her family’s haunted past. Why do you think Bobby refused to consider an assisted living facility? How did she come to accept Cassie’s help?

I didn’t like the romantic angle in the 2004 storyline, despite the swoon-worthy hero. It felt too sudden, and it didn’t add anything to the story. At the end of the book, Katya chooses to fight and live her life as best she can, even though the Soviets still occupy her village and her life has changed irrevocably. Was there a better option for her? Would you have continued fighting? A compelling and intimate story of love and survival. Harrowing and haunting . . . yet, at the same time, it is sensitive, beautiful and inspiring. Everybody should read this story, especially now. I cannot recommend it highly enough.” Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo In 1929 leidt de zestienjarige Katya nog een onbezorgd leven; ze wordt omringd door familie en is verliefd op haar buurjongen. Maar Stalins plan om Oekraïne, de graanschuur van Europa, in te lijven bij het communistischeA stunning portrait of Ukraine and its people, of strength, of endurance, of the fight for survival during the forced famine, the Holodomor, but also a tender story of Katya, a grandmother whose hidden history holds the power to guide her granddaughter through the darkness of loss and grief, toward life and a limitless future. A remarkable read not to be missed." It’s a heady finale for an author who spent 10 years chipping away at her idea for a novel, squeezing in writing sessions between her part-time job and raising two kids, now teenagers. Heartbreaking tale of the Homodor or Murder by Hunger, a man made famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine during Stalin's forced collective farms program. This was a horrible time in history and it has been covered up and forgotten. It should never be forgotten. When productive farms were taken over by the government and people killed or shipped to Siberia for simply disagreeing with the government or for trying to find food to survive. When people are reduced to eating earthworms and grain from the burrows of rats to survive and they are still dying. When a woman drops dead in a food line to receive a slice of bread. When people work all day on farms that are not their own and not allowed to work their own farms being paid only with a slice of bread for the day's work, the system is wrong, cruel and broken.

Dit verhaal heeft meerdere verhaallijnen. Zo lees je over Cassie in het jaar 2004. Haar man is overleden en sindsdien gaat het ook niet zo goed met haar dochtertje van vijf. Cassie trekt tijdelijk bij haar oma in en komt achter een schokkend verhaal uit het verleden van haar oma Katya. Litteken is a careful researcher, and she fleshes out this history in her detailed author’s note following the novel. She also mentions that she was originally motivated to write the story of how her great-grandmother and her family fled their Ukrainian village during World War II, but then learned of the Holodomor and knew that this story had to come first. It’s astonishing that the same family had to deal with so much misery, and I imagine Litteken’s next book will be just as compelling. This is a story of the resilience of the human spirit, the love that sees us through our darkest hours, and the true horror of what happened during the Holodomor. How does Cassie’s journey through Bobby’s life inspire her to rise above her grief of losing her husband? The Memory Keeper of Kyiv is a meticulously researched novel . . . depicting a country whose people managed to dig deep enough to find the strength, determination and heart to survive.” Deborah Carr, author of An Island at WarThe Memory Keeper of Kyiv is a dual-timeline novel. It follows a young woman and her family as they deal with Stalin’s invasion and the resulting famine in the 1930s and her granddaughter as she comes to term with her own losses and seeks to reconnect with her family heritage in the early 2000s. Das Buch erzählt innerhalb von zwei Zeitsträngen zum einen die Geschichte von Katja, um 1929 die in einem Dorf in Kiew aufwächst. Nachdem die Dorfbewohner gedrängt werden Stalins Kollektiv beizutreten verändert sich so viel für die Menschen und das greift die Autorin hier auf und veranschaulicht aus vielen verschiedenen Perspektiven und innerhalb verschiedenen Problematiken, was das alles mit sich bringt und wie es sich eben auf die Familien, auf das Erwachsenwerden auswirkt.