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Author: Salzmann, Sasha

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 13 February 2025 by PUSHKIN PRESS in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 336 pages
196 x 128 x 28 | 294g

‘A fascinating account of the collapse of the Soviet Union’ MARIE CLAIRE

‘Masterful and haunting’ ELENA GOROKHOVA

For Lena, childhood summers meant training to be a good socialist at Pioneer camp, singing songs in praise of Lenin. But when perestroika shatters her world, all must be unlearned. Lena’s corner of the USSR is suddenly Ukraine: there is a McDonalds in Moscow’s Red Square and certified foreign whisky, but no food in the shops.

For her friend Tatyana, survival in her changing homeland requires new skills: bullet dodging, business sense and a knack for bribery and corruption. When both women head West in search of new beginnings, their homesickness for a vanished land is inherited by their rebellious daughters, caught between forging their own identities and untangling the rich histories of the mothers who raised them.