Book Review: Baba Dunja´s Last Love

The Russian-German author Alina Bronsky is considered one of the most promising women authors her generation. Her books are always well welcomed by the critics and often nominated for local prizes. She come to Germany when she was 13 and in less than 5 years she was already writing in German for a local publication. 

Her books are often placed in a post-Soviet past, mostly with women characters with a tragi-comical view on life. This is the case of Rosa Achmetowna, the main character from the widely acclaimed - and translated into English - The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, or with Baba - the slavic word for grandmother - Dunja, the character of Baba Dunja´s Last Love (which I´ve read in the original German version - Baba Dunjas letzte Liebe). 

Dunja returns in a village contigous to Chernobyl, refusing to leave the contaminated area. Together with some other tragical, dying characters, she is about to take control of the situation and organises with a velvet glove the emptiness of a deserted place. Her encounters with modernity - aka Internet, ATMs etc - are hilarious and her voice sounds genuine and has an authenticity that is so much appreciated in the non-Soviet/local readership on such books. 

In a dying lanscape, surrounded by people about to die as well, she found peace in reading the letters from her daughter Irina living in Germany and her granddaugher Laura she never met and whose letters she cannot read because in a language she doesn´t know (German). Thus, the German-speaking readership finds a convenient connection. 

Personally, I wish I would have read this book many time ago. Right now, when it comes from Ukraine, my mind cannot fathom beyond the horrific images of the Russian massacres. I think those horrible crimes will influence from now on everything we can write about Ukraine. In the same way one cannot write about former Yugoslavia without mentioning the genocide commited there. Or about Syria without thinking about the crimes committed there. Or about Yemen, without thinking about the crimes committed there.

 Rating: 3 stars