(Fiction, 336 pp. 2024)
Winner of the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and a California Book Award, Vasilyuk’s debut novel centers on the life of Yefim Shulman, a Ukrainian Jewish soldier in Stalin’s army. Once passionate about the Communist cause and proud of his role as an artilleryman, Yefim’s faith in “Mother Russia” is challenged after his unit is ambushed when Germany declares war in 1941. Throughout the war and its aftermath, life-and-death circumstances force Yefim to deny his identity as a Jew and soldier—and the consequences of these choices haunt him throughout his life. The novel depicts how half-truths and untold stories became essential to survival in the USSR and continue echoing into the twenty-first century with the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Discussion questions from Bloomsbury Publishing
Article by Andrew Silow-Carroll on Vasilyuk receiving the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 24, 2025
Review by Nicole Yurcaba, World Literature Today, March 2024
Review by Svetlana Satchkova, Los Angeles Review of Books, April 24, 2024
Review by Hantian Zhang, The Masters Review, July 9, 2024
Review by Lorraine Berry, Alta, May 6, 2024
Review by Kevin Canfield, The San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2024
Presentation by the author at Globus Books in San Francisco (video)
Interview with Sasha Vasilyuk, Literary Hub, April 23, 2024
Interview with Sasha Vasilyuk, Chicago Review of Books, April 23, 2024
