Independence Square

 

by Martin Cruz Smith

First published May 9, 2023

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

268 pages

ISBN-13:

978-1398510425

 

 

 

 Detective Arkaday Renko—“one of the most compelling figures in modern fiction” (USA TODAY)—risks his life when he heads to Ukraine shortly before the Russian invasion to find an anti-Putin activist who has mysteriously disappeared.

Martin Cruz Smith has written nine previous novels featuring Arkady Renko, one of modern detective fiction’s most popular characters. These novels, beginning with 1981’s international sensation Gorky Park, have collectively traced Russia's evolution over the last half-century. Now, with Independence Square, Smith focuses on the fraught and frenzied days leading up to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.

It’s June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt boss has relegated him to a desk job. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s Disease.

This is an ingenious autobiographical conceit, as Martin Cruz Smith has Parkinson’s, and is able through Arkady to movingly describe his own experience with the disease. Parkinson’s hasn’t stopped Smith from his work, and neither does it stop Arkady. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case.

An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. The search leads them to Kyiv, where rumblings of an armed conflict grow louder. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance. And as he gets closer to locating Karina, Arkady discovers something that threatens his life as well as the lives of both Elena and Tatiana.

Few fiction writers have better captured contemporary Russia with more insight or authenticity than Martin Cruz Smith. He does the same here for Ukraine and the events that preceded Russia’s invasion. Independence Square is a timely and a uniquely personal mystery novel-meets-political thriller by a master of the form.

Source: https://www.amazon.ca/Independence-Square-Arkady-Ukraine-Novels-ebook/dp/B0BHTQX25J 

 

 

 

 

The Red Prince – The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke

by Timothy Snyder

Published by Basic Books

September, 28, 2010

352 pages

ISBN 10: 0465018971  |  ISBN 13: 9780465018970

 

 William von Habsburg wore the uniform of the Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, and, every so often, a dress. As a teenager during WWI, he chose for his kingdom the exotic and unknown land of Ukraine. But the collapse of his Ukrainian dream made him, by turns, an ally of German imperialists, a notorious French lover, an angry Austrian monarchist, a calm opponent of Hitler, and finally a British spy against Stalin. Acclaimed historian Timothy Snyder's The Red Prince offers an indelible portrait of a fascinating man who embodied the many contradictions of twentieth-century Europe. 

Source: https://www.amazon.ca/Red-Prince-Secret-Habsburg-Archduke/dp/0465018971 

Grey Bees

 

By Andrey Kurkov

Boris Dralyuk (Translator)

Published by Deep Vellum Publishing

April 8, 2022
360 Pages

ISBN-10:1646051661

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1646051663

Review by Darcia Hasey

For those of us who live a comfortable way of life away from the sounds and confusion of war, Grey Bees, Andrey Kurkov’s 2018 novel set in eastern Ukraine’s Grey Zone, allows us to immerse ourselves in an atmosphere of constant threat of bombardment from either the loyalists or the separatist forces. This is all captured through the eyes of his protagonist Sergey Sergeyich whose life and experiences are of a simple kind, where he is puttering along somewhat indifferently to all that goes on around him. There is little food, no electricity and only one other resident to talk to, his frienemy from his schooldays, Pashka Khmelenko.

What keeps Sergeyich focused are his bees. After years as a safety inspector in the Donbas mines, he has now retired and his bees and their care have become his one remaining pleasure. After a cold winter he itches to move his bees to sunnier climes where there is no war and they can collect their pollen in peace. His adventures along the way outside the Grey Zone open his eyes to the changes, not only in the rules and regulations he needs to follow, but in the attitudes of the people he meets, all the while trying to do the right thing and hoping humanity shows its face in the midst of all this conflict and chaos.

This novel is Kurkov’s acknowledgment of the thousands of people caught in these Grey Zones. He wanted to give a voice to these people to whom war had failed to force them from their homes. He does this not only with warmth and humour but also with the acknowledgement that war does terrible things.

Kurkov’s translator, Boris Dralyuk, does a brilliant job of translating the Russian into English making this a most gripping novel.

 

 

 

The House of Widows by Askold Melnyczuk

by Askold Melnyczuk
Published by Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, MN
Paperback
March 4, 2008, 256 pages

Synopsis
A novel of intrigue that is played across decades, continents, and generations by the celebrated, New York Times Notable author of Ambassador of the Dead.

Late one night, a week after Father's suicide, I finished sweeping the bulk of my inheritance into four giant trash bags, and heaved them into the dumpster at the construction site around the corner from his apartment. Then I sat down at the two-person coffee table in the middle of his kitchen, the fluorescent light loud as cicadas, and examined the three things I'd kept.
 
The three things that James kept are his father's British military uniform, an oversize glass jar, and a letter written in a language he can't read. They become the keys to unlocking the door on a past James never imagined while growing up amid the security of Boston's north shore, and they send him on an odyssey across England, Austria, and Ukraine. Along the way, he meets his dying aunt Vera, the matriarch of a mysterious branch of the family. His mission puts him face-to-face with the international sex trade, a displaced Palestinian girl with streaked pink hair and attitude to spare, and a violent world in which he is ultimately implicated. From old America, new Europe, and the timeless Middle East, James learns what it means to live in the webbed world of the twenty-first century.
In The House of Widows, Askold Melnyczuk offers a searing exploration of the individual's role in the inexorable assault of history.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/House-Widows-Oral-History/dp/1555974910

Prometheus: A Tale of the Human Quest for Enlightenment by Oles Berdnyk Translated by Roma Franko

Prometheus: A Tale of the Human Quest for Enlightenment
by Oles Berdnyk
Translated by Roma Franko, PhD
Published by Language Lanterns Publications
2012, 273 pages

Childhood friends–a beautiful girl of precocious intelligence, and her warrior-protector–travel from ancient Alexandria to classical Athens seeking education. Berdnyk imagines historical character Hypatia, a philosopher in the mid-4th to early-5th century AD, and her companion Isidore, traveling through ancient Greece, India and north Africa, encountering princes, priests, gurus and ascetics. We are immersed in a dazzling array of cultures and world views as we walk with them. 
Source: http://www.languagelanterns.com/ 

Rozmova Book Club members with Professor Roma Franko, translator of Oles Berdnyk's  

Prometheus: A Tale of the Human Quest for Enlightenment