The Madonnas of Leningrad

The Madonnas of Leningrad PDF Author: Debra Dean
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061747181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
“An extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating us to the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.” — Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times Bestselling author of Aloft and Native Speaker Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .

The Madonnas of Leningrad

The Madonnas of Leningrad PDF Author: Debra Dean
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061747181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
“An extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating us to the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.” — Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times Bestselling author of Aloft and Native Speaker Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .

The Madonnas of Leningrad

The Madonnas of Leningrad PDF Author: Debra Dean
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061747181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
“An extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating us to the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.” — Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times Bestselling author of Aloft and Native Speaker Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .

Hidden Tapestry

Hidden Tapestry PDF Author: Debra Dean
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810136848
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Hidden Tapestry reveals the unforgettable story of Flemish American artist Jan Yoors—childhood vagabond, wartime Resistance fighter, and polyamorous New York bohemian. At the peak of his fame in the 1970s, Yoors’s photographs and vast tapestries inspired a dedicated following in his adopted Manhattan and earned him international acclaim. Though his intimate friends guessed the rough outline of his colorful life, Hidden Tapestry is first to detail his astonishing secrets. At twelve, Jan’s life took an extraordinary and unexpected turn when, lured by stories of Gypsies, he wandered off with a group of Roma and continued to live on-and-off with them and with his own family for several years. As an adult in German-occupied France, Yoors joined the Resistance and persuaded his adoptive Roma family to fight alongside him. Defying repeated arrests and torture by the Gestapo, he worked first as a saboteur and later escorted Allied soldiers trapped behind German lines across the Pyrenees to freedom. After the war, he married childhood friend Annabert van Wettum and embarked on his career as an artist. When a friend of Annabert’s, Marianne Citroen, modeled for Yoors, the two began an affair, which led the three to form a polyamorous family that would last for the rest of their lives. Moving to New York, the trio became part of the bohemian life of Greenwich Village in the 1950s. Told in arresting detail by Debra Dean, best-selling author of The Madonnas of Leningrad, Yoors’s story is a luminous and inspiring account of resilience, resourcefulness, and love.

Lost Souls of Leningrad

Lost Souls of Leningrad PDF Author: Suzanne Parry
Publisher: She Writes Press
ISBN: 164742268X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
From the tyranny of Stalin through the desperation of World War II, this is a story of struggle and survival, of devotion, duty, and family, and of love lost and sometimes found again. June 1941. Hitler’s armies race toward vulnerable Leningrad. In a matter of weeks, the Nazis surround the city, cut off the food supply, and launch a vicious bombardment. Widowed violinist Sofya Karavayeva and her teenage granddaughter, Yelena, are cornered in the crumbling city. On Leningrad’s outskirts, Admiral Vasili Antonov defends his homeland and fights for a future with Sofya. Meanwhile, Yelena’s soldier fiancé transports food across the Ice Road—part of the desperate effort to save Leningrad. With their help, the two women inch toward survival, but the war still exacts a steep personal price, even as Sofya’s reckoning with a family secret threatens to finish what Hitler started. Equal parts war epic, family saga, and love story, Lost Souls of Leningrad brings to vivid life this little-known chapter of World War II in a tale of two remarkable women—grandmother and granddaughter—separated by years and experience but of one heart in their devotion to each other and the men they love. Neither the oppression of Stalin nor the brutality of Hitler can destroy their courage, compassion, or will in this testament to resilience.

The Siege

The Siege PDF Author: Helen Dunmore
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802139580
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Called "elegantly, starkly beautiful" by "The New York Times Book Review, The Siege" is Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental--the Nazi's 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed 600,000--but her focus is heartrendingly intimate.

The War Within

The War Within PDF Author: Alexis Peri
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Winner of the AATSEEL Book Prize Winner of the University of Southern California Book Prize Honorable Mention, Reginald Zelnik Book Prize “Stand aside, Homer. I doubt whether even the author of the Iliad could have matched Alexis Peri’s account of the 872-day siege which Leningrad endured.” —Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator “Fascinating and perceptive.” —Antony Beevor, New York Review of Books “Powerful and illuminating...A fascinating, insightful, and nuanced work.” —Anna Reid, Times Literary Supplement “A sensitive, at times almost poetic examination.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs In September 1941, two and a half months after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the German Wehrmacht encircled Leningrad. Cut off from the rest of Russia, the city remained blockaded for 872 days, at a cost of almost a million civilian lives. It was one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. The War Within chronicles the Leningrad blockade from the perspective of those who endured it. Drawing on unpublished diaries written by men and women from all walks of life, Alexis Peri tells the tragic story of how young and old struggled to make sense of a world collapsing around them. When the blockade was lifted in 1944, Kremlin officials censored publications describing the ordeal and arrested many of Leningrad’s wartime leaders. Some were executed. Diaries—now dangerous to their authors—were concealed in homes, shelved in archives, and forgotten. The War Within recovers these lost accounts, shedding light on one of World War II’s darkest episodes while paying tribute the resilience of the human spirit.

Guests on Earth

Guests on Earth PDF Author: Lee Smith
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616203803
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
“Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work.” —Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl It’s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital’s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses cascading events that lead up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. Author Lee Smith has created, through a seamless blending of fiction and fact, a mesmerizing novel about a world apart--in which art and madness are luminously intertwined.

The Ordeal of the Hermitage

The Ordeal of the Hermitage PDF Author: Sergeĭ Petrovich Varshavskiĭ
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description


Into the Beautiful North

Into the Beautiful North PDF Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 9780316053402
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village--they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own "Siete Magníficos"--to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over. Filled with unforgettable characters and prose as radiant as the Sinaloan sun, INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH is the story of an irresistible young woman's quest to find herself on both sides of the fence.

Roads

Roads PDF Author: Marina Antropow Cramer
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 161373557X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
When Nazi forces occupy the beautiful coastal city of Yalta, Crimea, everything changes. Eighteen-year-old Filip has few options; he is a prime candidate for forced labor in Germany. His hurried marriage to his childhood friend Galina might grant him reprieve, but the rules keep shifting. Galina’s parents, branded as traitors for innocently doing business with the enemy, decide to volunteer in hopes of better placement. The work turns out to be horrific, but at least the family stays together. By winter 1945, Allied air raids destroy strategic sites; Dresden, a city of no military consequence, seems safe. The world knows Dresden’s fate. Roads is the story of one family lucky enough to escape with their lives as the city burns behind them. But as the war ends, they are separated and their trials continue. Looking for safety in an alien land, they move toward one another with the help of refugee networks and pure chance. Along the way, they find new ways to live in a changed world—new meanings for fidelity, grief, and love.