French theatrical company LA COMPAGNIE DES MOTS MIGRATEURS presents a performance for children UNE VICTOIRE EN PAPIER based on Ulitskaya's works - February 2009
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THE LYING YEAR, a novel by Andrei Gelasimov
Rights sold: Bulgaria - ENTHUSIAST, France - ACTES SUD, Russia - OGI, Slovenia - Modrijan, World English - AMAZON CROSSING
Could have been the blown business deal with the Italians. Could have been the unauthorized office party, which ended with the cops—and then an arrest. No matter what finally got him fired, Mikhail never expected to find himself at Red Star Industries’ office again.
So down-and-out Mikhail is surprised to be called in by old boss, who offers Mikhail easy money and the Land Rover of his dreams to teach his son, Sergei, how to “be a man”—and to spy on him.
Of course, Sergei’s not the Internet-obsessed recluse his father believes. He’s hiding a relationship with the beautiful Marina, who Mikhail himself can’t help but fall for as well. To keep it all together, Mikhail finds himself lying to Petrovich about his son’s activities, lying to Marina about Sergei’s intentions, and lying to Sergei about his love for Marina. So when Sergei’s father invites them all to Italy, the web of lies holding their world together begins to fall apart, and about the time Mikhail finds himself held hostage at gunpoint, he realizes he’s gotten in way over his head…
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OST: A Lifelong Curse. Fate of Ostarbeiters during and after the WWII in documents, letters, and recorded oral memories (NF)
Winner of the 2021 Jan Michalski Prize
Winner of the 2017 Enlightener Prize (Russia)Rights sold Germany - Ch. Links Verlag, World English - GRANTA BOOKS
Ostarbeiter ("Eastern worker" in German) was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. Deportations of civilians commenced at the beginning of the war and reached unprecedented levels following Operation Barbarossa of 1941. Over 50% of Ostarbeiters were formerly Soviet subjects: ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Russians, Tatars, and others. Estimates of the number of Ostarbeiters range between 3 million and 5.5 million. All Ostarbeiters workers were required to wear an identification patch with "Ost."
By 1944, most new workers were very young, under the age of 16, as those older than that were usually conscripted for service in Germany; 30% were as young as 12–14 years of age when they were taken from their homes. The age limit was dropped to 10 in November 1943.
Since about half of the adolescents were female, Ostarbeiters were often the victims of rape and tens of thousands of pregnancies due to rape occurred. Ostarbeiters were often given starvation rations and were forced to live in guarded camps. Many died from starvation, overwork, bombing (they were denied access to bomb shelters), abuse and execution carried out by their German overseers.
Following the war, over 2.5 million liberated Ostarbeiters were repatriated, many of them against their will, and in the USSR they suffered from social ostracization as well as deportation to gulags for "re-education." American authorities banned the repatriation of Ostarbeiters in October, 1945 and some immigrated to the U.S. as well as other non eastern-bloc countries.
In 2000, the German government and thousands of German companies paid a one-time payment of over € 5 billion to Ostarbeiter victims of the Nazi regime.
This is the first and only serious full-scale historical research on Ostarbeiters in existence. The book is based on Soviet archive documents and more than two hundred personal testimonies, hundreds of hours of interviews tape-recorded by the Memorial employees, and over 350,000 letters kept in the Memorial Society archives. Thematically organized material offers the exhaustive treatment.
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