Books at the Institute: No Country for Love by Yaroslav Trofimov

Books at the Institute is pleased to present an evening with Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal to celebrate the American edition release of his debut novel 

No Country for Love

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Ukrainian Institute of America
2 East 79th Street (at Fifth Avenue)
New York, NY 10075

Mr. Trofimov will be joined in conversation by Will Chancellor, Fiction Editor of The Brooklyn Rail.

Book signing and light reception to follow
$20 / $10 UIA members 

An ambitious and sweeping debut novel inspired by the life of the author’s grandmother who lived through the seismic events in Ukraine from the 1930s to 1950s.

Seventeen-year-old Debora Rosenbaum, ambitious and in love with literature, arrives in the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kharkiv, 1930, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; it’s a new dawn, the Soviet era, where skyscrapers go up overnight. Debora finds work and meets a dashing young officer named Samuel who is training to become a fighter pilot. They fall in love and begin to mix with Ukraine’s new cultural elite.

But Debora’s prospects — and Ukraine’s — soon dim. State-induced famine rolls through the over-harvested countryside, and any deviation from Moscow-dictated ideology is punished by disappearance. When Samuel is sentenced to ten years’ hard labor, Deborah is left on her own with a baby. And this is only the beginning.

As advancing Nazi armies move through Ukraine during World War II, its yellow fields of wheat run red with blood. Forced to renounce the man she loves, her identity and even her name, Debora also learns to endure, manipulate and resist.

No Country for Love follows the hard choices Debora makes as Ukraine, caught between two totalitarian ideologies, turns into the deadliest place in the world — and she tries to protect those she loves most.

Praise for No Country for Love:

“Through the saga of a Jewish Ukrainian family unfolding from the 1930s until the post-war period, Yaroslav Trofimov delivers a literary epic taking place in the “bloodlands” — to borrow the title from Timothy Snyder’s book — scarred by the Nazi and Stalinist horrors. It is an expansive novel reminiscent of the literary breadth, humanity, and historical depth found in Vassili Grossman’s Life and Fate.” — Christophe Boltanski, winner of the 2015 Femina Prize for The Safe House

“A chilling account of what it means to live under a totalitarian regime. With the sharp pen of an award-winning journalist and the tender heart of a poet, Yaroslav Trofimov has woven an exquisite and enduring tale of survival, courage, and resistance. Epic yet intimate, heart-breaking yet hopeful, terrifying yet inspiring, No Country for Love is a love letter to Ukraine and a gift to anyone who appreciates peace.” — Nguyen Phan Que Mai, internationally best-selling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child

“Doctor Zhivago meets Stalingrad — a mix of romantic historical fiction and gritty, reportage-like storytelling … The story across decades of impossible love, war and survival rings painfully and beautifully true … Unforgettable.” — NPR

“Journalistic precision translates effortlessly into fiction, with each chapter unfolding like a meticulously crafted dispatch, devoid of any superfluous elements.” — Kate Tsurkan, Kyiv Independent

“A beautiful, important and timely rendering of Jewish life in Ukraine through the travails of the 20th century. Both historical and page-turning.” — Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends and Super Sad True Love Story

“At a time when many people are scrambling to understand Ukraine, No Country for Love gives us the story of the country’s painful twentieth century as a sweeping romantic epic. It links the personal and the political in a way that cuts through wartime propaganda, restoring both human scale and moral complexity.” — Hari Kunzru

Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel (The Siege of Mecca, Faith at War, Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War for Independence, and No Country for Love). He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal since 1999 and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023 for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022 for his work on Afghanistan. His honors include an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of India as well as the Washington Institute gold medal for the best book on the Middle East. He holds an MA from New York University.

Will Chancellor is the author of the novel A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall  (Harper Perennial, 2014). He is currently writing an alternate history of the Soviet space program titled The Meaning of Certain Dreams. He edits fiction at The Brooklyn Rail. His writing has appeared in Bookforum, Lit Hub, The New York Times Magazine, Interview, Electric Literature, The White Review, and The New York Times. He recently wrote on the Brazilian painter Lucas Arruda for David Zwirner Books (Lucas Arruda: Deserto-Modelo, 2019).

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To have a copy of the book signed, No Country for Love will be available for purchase ($26.00) at the Ukrainian Institute of America the evening of the event. 

By purchasing a book from the UIA, you are supporting its continued cultural and educational programming and the further enjoyment of its unique events by our friends and community along New York’s Museum Mile.

For further information: Please contact the Ukrainian Institute of America at (212) 288-8660 or mail@ukrainianinstitute.org.

Author photo by Sebastian Böttcher.

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Title: No Country for Love
Author: Yaroslav Trofimov
Publisher: Abacus (February 11, 2025)
Hardcover: 384 pages
ISBN-10: 0349145318
ISBN-13:  978-0349145310
Item Weight: 1.37 pounds
Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.15 x 9.5 inches