The Prussian Bride
18 hrs. 26 min.
Description
Yuri Buida is a prose writer, author of the novels “Veverna Gardens,” “The Fifth Kingdom,” “Blue Blood,” and “Thief, Spy and Killer” (the “Big Book” award). His books have been translated into many languages.
“The Prussian Bride” is a city-book: densely populated, mixed, and strange. Back then, it wasn’t Soviet Znamensk in the Kaliningrad region conquered by the Red Army in 1945. After the war, “people without a cause” from all over the Union came there to build a new life. Before that, the town was called Walaw (Velaу), it was German, and it was considered East Prussia. A world of tiled roofs and cobblestone streets meets Russian mentality. Here harsh reality lives alongside myths and legends; grotesque and romance coexist with very harsh realism; human tragedies with genuine—sometimes even absurd—love…
“In the evening, all the Germans were sent away under escort to the station, put into cattle cars, and shipped off. There was one Rita left. And also Cheerful Gertrude. And no one else—no single German. Lutheran churches, roads lined with linden trees, narrow canals, and slow locks—faded German sky over the flat Baltic Sea—yes, all that remained, but in an instant it became ours. Terrifyingly ours.”
“The Prussian Bride” is a city-book: densely populated, mixed, and strange. Back then, it wasn’t Soviet Znamensk in the Kaliningrad region conquered by the Red Army in 1945. After the war, “people without a cause” from all over the Union came there to build a new life. Before that, the town was called Walaw (Velaу), it was German, and it was considered East Prussia. A world of tiled roofs and cobblestone streets meets Russian mentality. Here harsh reality lives alongside myths and legends; grotesque and romance coexist with very harsh realism; human tragedies with genuine—sometimes even absurd—love…
“In the evening, all the Germans were sent away under escort to the station, put into cattle cars, and shipped off. There was one Rita left. And also Cheerful Gertrude. And no one else—no single German. Lutheran churches, roads lined with linden trees, narrow canals, and slow locks—faded German sky over the flat Baltic Sea—yes, all that remained, but in an instant it became ours. Terrifyingly ours.”
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