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The Rooster House
A Ukrainian Family Memoir
A riveting and deeply moving memoir that explores a Ukrainian woman's search for the truth behind an unmentioned family secret - and the Ukrainian people's complex relationship with their Soviet history
In the Ukrainian city of Poltava stands a building known as the Rooster House, an elegant mansion with two voluptuous red roosters flanking the door. It doesn't look horrifying. And yet, when Victoria was a girl growing up in the 1980s, her great-grandmother would take pains to avoid walking past it.
In 2014, while the Russian state was annexing Crimea, Victoria visited her grandmother in Bereh, the hamlet near Poltava that was a haven in her childhood. Just before the trip she came across her great-grandfather's diary, one page scored deep with the single line: 'Brother Nikodim, vanished in the 1930s fighting for a free Ukraine.' She had never heard of this uncle and no one - especially her grandmother - seemed willing to tell her about him.
Victoria became obsessed with recovering his story, and returned to her birth country again and again in pursuit of it. In the end, after years of sifting through Ukraine's post-Soviet bureaucracy, after travelling to tiny, ruined villages and speaking to the wizened survivors of that era, her winding search took her back to the place she had always known it would - to the Rooster House, and the dark truths contained in its basement.
Inspired by the author's love for her family, and peopled by warm, larger-than-life characters who jostle alongside the ghostly absences of others, The Rooster House is at once a riveting journey into the complex history of a wounded country and a profoundly moving tribute to hope and the refusal of despair.
Review
A moving personal journey unravelling complex family relationships, secrets and memories. Belim takes us into the homes of rural Ukrainians, illuminating their hopes, fears, struggles and traditions. Her love of the country and its people stands out in her sensitive depiction of their stoicism, hospitality and bonds... This is an honest, insightful and passionate book, that provides a beautiful insight into a nation beyond war headlines -- Tom Pilgrim ― Independent
Sparkles with details of rural life and Soviet-inherited bureaucratic absurdity ... a moving account of a still much-misunderstood country, given extra poignancy by the disaster now unfolding ― New Statesman
Ethereal and transporting ... Ukraine comes alive through a tapestry of multisensory descriptions. Barbed by pain, this is a book as poignant as it is timely ... it reflects the indestructible strength of the Ukrainian people, who so fiercely hold on to hope ― Times Literary Supplement
A Wild Swans for Ukraine ... an enthralling, multilayered family story, told across four generations. Rich and magnificent. A marvel ― Bookseller
Part memoir, part detective story ... [this] picture of a divided Ukrainian family shows how deep the divisions can be - and how to heal them means overcoming decades of silence, secrecy and denial -- Blake Morrison ― Guardian
Emotionally shattering yet utterly unputdownable, Belim's search to find out what happened to her great-grandfather's brother in 1930s Ukraine is a haunting work of research and revelation ― Waterstones
A powerful memoir... tells the story of Ukraine through the lens of her own family, from WWII occupation to Chernobyl - to the trauma of today ― Irish Examiner
A beautifully written evocation of the Ukrainian people through the prism of four generations of one family, but it is also a celebration of Ukrainian women... evokes a Ukraine beyond the rubble-strewn images we see on the television news... a truly redemptive book, strangely joyful even, one that makes the tragedy of the Russian invasion personal ― New European
Ukraine comes alive through a tapestry of multisensory descriptions... Such descriptions are ethereal and transporting, but Belim balances them with a raw bluntness in her sketches of war and trauma... a book as poignant as it is timely... it reflects the indestructible strength of the Ukrainian people, who so fiercely hold on to hope -- Caroline Eden ― Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Victoria Belim is a writer, journalist, and translator of Persian literature and poetry. She has a column in the Financial Times and her writing on culture and lifestyle topics has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, ELLE, Red Magazine, and Marie Claire. She speaks eighteen languages, including Japanese, Turkish, and Indonesian. Born in Ukraine, Victoria grew up in the USA and now lives in Brussels, Belgium.
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