Olga Gromova's book "Sugar Child" was recorded by her from the words of Stella Nudolskaya, whose childhood fell at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s in the Soviet Union. It is a very personal and soul-stirring story about how five-year-old Elya, growing up happily in a loving family, suddenly finds herself the daughter of an "enemy of the people" and is thrust into a terrifying world she cannot understand: after her father's arrest, she and her mother are sent to a camp in Kyrgyzstan as FTMs (family members of traitors to the Motherland) and SDEs (socially dangerous elements). But despite all the trials, hunger, and illnesses they have to endure, Elya and her mother do not lose heart: they recite poetry, sing songs, tell jokes, and truly care for one another. "Sugar Child" is in many ways a "coming-of-age novel," a story about love, as well as about what dignity and freedom truly are. Elya's mother puts it most accurately regarding freedom: "Slavery is a state of mind. A free person cannot be made a slave."
Author: Olga Gromova
Illustrations: Maria Pasternak
Pages: 160 (offset). Hardcover
Dimensions: 218x148x12 mm
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