The story of the deportation of Romanians from Bukovina to the steppes of Siberia in World War Two, an exercise in historical memory and a powerful story of maintaining humanity in impossible conditions.

Ana is eleven when the Soviet soldiers send her from Bukovina, Romania, to Kazakhstan. She is just one of many forced to leave behind her home and make the three-week long journey via freight train. The trip is a harsh, humiliating one, but in spite of the cold and the closeness of death, life persists in the train wagon in the form of storytelling, riddles, and ritual. Years later, Ana recalls her childhood for her great-granddaughter, who is considering moving her to a nursing home. Her story, told with unflinching candour, is a chronicle of a life lived during a time of great political and national change, a story of an existence defined and curtailed by lines drawn on a map.

The narration is interspersed with songs that transform into poems, and prayers spoken in the past that become prayers in the present. What links the narration is not so much a plot as it is the reader’s astonishment. How could Ana survive such a series of experiences, and do so with her mind and heart intact? A history of cruelty and trauma lies behind the banal markers of contemporary life. These realizations combine in the central theme of the book, one which the narrator describes as, “stories bring you youth.”

‍

Praise for Kinderland:

"Α vivid portrait of  rural life... Kinderland is a heartbreaking account of a childhood abruptly curtailed” —Financial Times

‍
"An extraordinary look at life in Europe's edgelands ... full of surprising imagery and beautiful writing ... exquisitely translated by Monica Cure." —The Guardian

Praise for The Censor’s Notebook:

"Offers an immersive experience into a polyphony of voices" —Litro Magazine

"Below the humorous surface The Censor's Notebook is a complex, multilayered and multidimensional novel in which fact and fiction are cleverly entwined" —Times Literary Supplement‍

“Corobca’s novel should not be categorized as eastern European interest or communist history, but as an object lesson for our increasingly complex information age.” —Financial Times

‍