Glorious People by Salzmann, Sasha

Description

‘A fascinating account of the collapse of the Soviet Union’ MARIE CLAIRE

‘Masterful and haunting’ ELENA GOROKHOVA

For Lena, childhood summers meant training to be a good socialist at Pioneer camp, singing songs in praise of Lenin. But when perestroika shatters her world, all must be unlearned. Lena’s corner of the USSR is suddenly Ukraine: there is a McDonalds in Moscow’s Red Square and certified foreign whisky, but no food in the shops.

For her friend Tatyana, survival in her changing homeland requires new skills: bullet dodging, business sense and a knack for bribery and corruption. When both women head West in search of new beginnings, their homesickness for a vanished land is inherited by their rebellious daughters, caught between forging their own identities and untangling the rich histories of the mothers who raised them.