Overview
"[A] masterpiece . . . Babi Yar [is] every bit the peer of the canonical works of witness [such as] Anne Frank's diary . . . Wiesel's Night . . . Solzhenityn's Gulag Archipelago." āGeorge Packer, The Atlantic
An internationally acclaimed documentary novel that describes the fateful collision of Russia, Ukraine, and Nazi Germany, and one of the largest mass executions of the Holocaust, with a new introduction by Masha Gessen.
āI wonder if we shall ever understand that the most precious thing in this world is a manās life and his freedom? Or is there still more barbarism ahead? With these questions I think I shall bring this book to an end. I wish you peace. And freedom.ā
At the age of twelve, Anatoly Kuznetsov experienced the Nazi invasion of Ukraine, and soon began keeping a diary of the brutal occupation of Kiev that followed. Years later, he combined those notebooks with other survivorsā memories to create a classic work of documentary witness in the form of a novel. When Babi Yar was first published in a Soviet magazine in 1966, it became a literary sensation, not least for its powerful and unprecedented narratives of the Nazi massacre of the cityās Jews, and later Roma, prisoners of war, and other victims, at the Babi Yar ravineāone of the largest mass killings of the Holocaust. After Kuznetsov defected to Great Britain in 1969, he republished the book in a new edition that included extensive passages censored by the Soviets, along with his later reflections.
In its fully realized form, Babi Yar is a classic of Holocaust and World War II testimony. With sustained immediacy, it relates a scrappy but principled boyās day-to-day fight to survive and provide for his family. He dodges bullets and avoids transport to Germany, befriends black market horse dealers and pre-revolutionary aristocrats, wonders at the pomp of the Naziās opera performances, overhears his mother and grandparents debate the merits of German versus Soviet rule, collects grenades, digs hiding places, and confronts the moral dilemmas of assisting neighbors or looting storesāall the while hearing the constant hum of bullets at the Babi Yar ravine nearby.
In a bravura feat of reporting, he tells the story of what happened at Babi Yarāfrom the deceptive roundup of the cityās Jews and execution of the national soccer team, to the memories of the siteās few survivors and the story of a daring escape. The bookās once-censored passages explore the Soviet effort to hide the realities of the massacre and other facts about wartime that the regime did not want discussed.
In the manner of Elie Wieselās Night or The Diary of Anne Frank, here is a book that tells some of the most uncomfortable truths of the past centuryāand the most essential.
This book title, Babi Yar (A Document in the Form of a Novel; New, Complete, Uncensored Version) - 9781250883834, ISBN: 9781250883834, by Anatoly Kuznetsov, A. Anatoli, Masha Gessen, published by Picador (March 7, 2023) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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