Wheatshaft

 By Victor Malarek

Friesen Press

282 pages

October 29, 2021

 

 

 

An Evening with Victor Malarek

Summary by Karen Yarmol-Franko 

Rozmova Book Club hosted investigative journalist and author, Victor Malarek, to discuss his latest title, Wheatshaft. Victor Malarek drew from his experience as an investigative journalist with CTV’s W5 and CBC’s The Fifth Estate to write the novel, inventing characters and plotlines that are reminiscent of headlines from our daily news.

Here are some highlights from our discussion.

Rozmova: How did Victor come to write Wheatshaft?

A woman came to see Victor when he was reporting for CBC’s The Fifth Estate. The woman’s son, an international development worker, had committed suicide. He had blown his head off. His mother said she knew her son would never have taken his life, and that he had told her some stories about corruption within the aid agencies he was working for. Victor had seen photos of the gruesome “suicide” and consulted with a forensics expert as he had suspicions the young man’s mother was right. The forensics expert confirmed that there were no burn marks from the gun and the spatter indicated it was murder, not suicide. This story – along with Victor’s deep experience in seven war zones, his suspicions about corruption and misuse of funds in global aid agencies and the UN, and his loathing of russian oligarchs – all became pieces of the plotline of Wheatshaft.

Rozmova: How much of Matt Kozar’s character is based on Victor?

Victor admitted that Matt is based closely on his own life and experience as an investigative journalist. From a difficult childhood in foster care with a father suffering from PTSD, the deprivation of his connection to his Ukrainian roots, and a hard life that prepared him to take on bullies, Matt and Victor bear a remarkable resemblance. They also share a deep commitment to social justice.

Even Victor’s investigative methods for convincing people to reveal what they know are brought into Wheatshaft. Victor said that he’s often asked by journalism students how to get the information. “You need to have a burn in your gut to dig in and demand answers,” he said. “Journalists generally don’t chase far or deep enough. They don’t ask the hard questions. To go after bullies and stories, you can’t be afraid.”

Rozmova:  Are the organizations and people you name in the book based on real life organizations and the people who run them? For example, Global Crusade and its powerful evangelical minister, Lionel Power; the repugnant US Republican Senator Caine; the unscrupulous head of the UN International Food Fund, Gebran Kamra; and the ruthless russian oligarchs, Ivan and Sergei Melekov?

Victor said that Lionel Powers of Global Crusade is an amalgam of people in power in the international development field. Similarly, the depiction of russian oligarchs is drawn from his research on how they operate and carry out their menacing missions.

Rozmova: Is the newsroom environment an accurate depiction of your experience there?

The newsroom has changed with social media taking over and actual newsrooms being reduced to a skeleton staff. In Wheatshaft, Victor describes the newsroom he experienced where you had to take editors and bureau chiefs on and where sabotaging other journalists’ stories was commonplace. He said that some colleagues had your back while others were competing for the story.

Rozmova: As a writer, how did you move from investigative journalism where you must stick strictly to facts, to fiction where your imagination can take over?

Moving from investigative journalism to fiction is an easy transition for Victor. He draws upon truthful themes and embellishes the story while being free from the legal scrutiny required in all investigative documentaries. Victor admitted, however, that his editor, Sonia Holiad, told him to remove some parts from the first draft. After another read through, he agreed those passages didn’t add to the story.

Rozmova: What is your writing process?

Victor said, “Writing is an organic process. It just happens.” He said he didn’t attend any fiction-writing workshops, rather “the ideas come and I ask myself, ‘How can I unfold this?’” He has a notepad by his bed and he jots down ideas as they come to him. He sets out plotlines – A , B, C – and crafts each of them into a beginning, middle and end. He focuses heads down on just writing the book and then he goes back to the beginning to ensure all the plots and characters flow logically. He said it’s difficult to write about things you haven’t experienced so he draws heavily on his more than 325 investigative documentaries and the thousands of people he has met to tell a convincing story. “You have to be disciplined to write a book,” he says. “Concentrate on what you have to do and write like you have a deadline.” When he’s in the midst of writing, he’ll sometimes work from 10 am to 6 pm. Most of all, he says, “You have to have a dedication to want to do it.”

The evening closed with Rozmova wishing Victor a very happy birthday. We look forward to reading his new book where Matt will discover his roots and reveal more corruption based on current events in our world today.

Victor Malarek donates all proceeds from the sale of Wheatshaft to the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.

 

 

A Boy in Winter

 

By Rachel Seiffert

Vintage International Publishers

Published in 2018; copyright 2017

238 pages

ISBN: 978-0-8041-6880-9

 Summary by Uliana Pasicznyk

This poignant novel begins in Nazi-occupied Ukraine in November 1941. The German Wehrmacht has pushed the Soviet Red Army across much of western Ukraine and is advancing toward Kyiv.  Following the Wehrmacht, the German SS has arrived in the town where thirteen-year-old Yankel and his family live. Yasia, a seventeen-year-old Ukrainian girl, is in the town too, having arrived there from her family’s farm in the surrounding countryside. Stationed nearby is the German engineer Otto Pohl, whose task is to build a solid road for the Germans’ use. Their lives soon intertwine in a remarkable and memorable story.

In the town, people fear the SS’s presence and what its occupation means. Yankel’s parents and small sister are already in the crowd of people gathered in the brickworks factory in the centre of town, having been commanded to appear there along with all other Jews. But independent-minded Yankel has no intention of heading there. His little brother, Momik, is with him, and he must find some other place for the two of them to go.

Ostensibly Yasia has come to town to sell fruit, but her real aim is to see Mykola, her beloved, who abandoned the retreating Red Army and has begun policing for the Germans. Venturing out at dusk to seek him out, Yasia chances upon the two brothers keeping to the shadows along a dark side street. What are they doing out here, she wonders fretfully, especially now, when the whole village is strange and times are troubled? When the boys follow her, she realizes they have no place to go. Apprehensive and reluctant though she is, Yasia hides them in the loft of her cousin’s barn.

Outside the town, Otto continues to oversee his workers and report on the construction of the road that is his responsibility. But he is uneasy, and he avoids dealing with the SS and German military in the area. Why are they still here, he wonders irritably, when the victorious Wehrmacht has marched on? Why is he obliged to make local men labour on the road for such long stretches of time without adequate food or rest, resulting in less than good work? And then there was that scene he witnessed, the way the SS had treated the town’s Jewish schoolmaster and his mother – it appalled Otto. He has gradually begun to realize what the goals of the Nazis he is working for are, and he is increasingly troubled by them. The only person with whom he can share all this is his wife back in Germany, but he knows his letters to her are read by censors and so anything he writes could endanger them both.

Readers of the novel encounter others who are part of what is happening: Yankel’s worried parents Ephraim and Miryam with small Rosa; the battered schoolmaster and his bewildered elderly mother; rash Mykola and his unyielding parents; Otto’s calculating SS supervisor, Arnold; Yasia’s fearful cousin Osip, and his suspicious neighbours; her reticent uncle, and members of his community far out in the marshlands; the partisans who also roam there. Always at the centre of the story, though, are Yasia and the two brothers she has unwillingly become responsible for. As Yasia and Yankel work through their distrust of each other, dangerous incidents and horrific events occur, and they must depend on each other to survive. At one point, Otto comes across them and their lives are literally in his hands; the actions he takes then alter his life, as well as theirs.

Our Rozmova group had much to say about A Boy in Winter. Several members noted events and characters in the book that resembled wartime experiences they had heard about in their own families. The group was appreciative of the clear writing style, fluid yet precise narrative, and use of concise dialogue that characterize the book, agreeing that together they allowed readers to  “witness” characters, actions, and scenes vividly. One example was when restless Momik must be kept quiet in the barn loft lest a noise reveal their presence; Yankel acts by swiftly and silently fashioning animals from bits of straw and twigs for the little boy to play with, as Yasia, still apprehensive but now also appreciative of Yankel’s quick thinking and ingenuity, looks on. Another element focused on was that the main characters spoke three different languages, at times conveyed by italicized words in those languages, so communicating effectively with one another was a complexity evident from the start.

The author, Rachel Seiffert, is a prize-winning writer whose first book, The Dark Room, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. In interviews she has spoken about elements in her personal history – for instance, her German family background – that have affected her choice of topics and characters to portray. One theme strongly present in her work is how the individual acts within the context of history, that is, in critical historical events as they are happening around him or her. Rozmova members agreed that in dealing with her characters and their actions, Seiffert writes in a way that allows her readers to visualize them clearly and in depth. In sum, her skill as a writer allowed her readers to make their own judgments about these characters and actions, and that was something Rozmova readers valued highly in this book.

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.

 

 

 

YALTA: The Price of Peace

By Serhii Plokhy

Published by Penguin Books

January 2011

480 pages

ISBN: 9780143118923

Summary by Laurisa Hrycyna 

In February 1945, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta, a resort town on the Black Sea. Over the eight days of the conference, they partitioned Germany, decided the fate of people living in Eastern Europe, and laid the foundation for a new international organization to settle disputes in the future. Despite the enormous significance of the outcome of these negotiations, there was no official record of the Yalta conference.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Soviet archives were opened in what is referred to as the “archival revolution”. Plokhy reassessed the Yalta conference in light of these documents, and provides a new perspective on the Yalta conference.

The book is factually detailed providing many historical references yet is surprisingly readable. The book will take some time to read, but is definitely worthwhile.

The book begins by describing the journeys made by the three leaders to Yalta.

FDR set sail on the USS Quincy to Malta with his daughter and select advisors. Churchill’s party consisted of three planes but only two reached their destination in the predawn mist. Stalin arrived overland with his contingent of NKVD officers and Soviet troops.

Each of the leaders came with their own specific perspectives and objectives.

Stalin was the most informed and viewed American Imperialism as the enemy. FDR’s health was seriously declining and was focused on attaining a permanent peace. Churchill’s goal was to maintain Britain’s interests in Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece which had communist parties in power. Churchill, Britain’s great orator was often dismissed by Stalin.

International borders were redrawn and millions of people were forcibly resettled without consulting the governments and nations involved. Spheres of influence were created and Stalin’s rule over Eastern Europe was never overtly challenged.

You will be surprised and shocked by the parallel of events with russia’s current invasion of Ukraine. russia the liberator versus the invader; Stalin’s and Putin’s willingness to incur huge military losses to obtain personal goals of invasion and imperialism.

The Yalta Conference was key to the official creation of the United Nations – within months of the conference – as well as the Soviet Union (and subsequently russia) and China each having veto powers  in the UN Security Council. Yalta shows that the unity of democratic countries is essential to achieve democratic rights and freedoms. russia’s invasion of Ukraine is showing that this cannot be forgotten.