I Will Die In A Foreign Land, Kalani Pickhart
I Will Die In A Foreign Land, Kalani Pickhart
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I Will Die In A Foreign Land

Author: Kalani Pickhart

Narrator: Adam Barr

Unabridged: 8 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/21/2021


Synopsis

In 1913, a Russian ballet incited a riot in Paris at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. A century later, in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to protest then-President Yanukovych's failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President Vladimir Putin and Russia. The peaceful protests turned violent when military police shot live ammunition into the crowd, killing over a hundred civilians.

I Will Die in a Foreign Land follows four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are forever changed by the Euromaidan protests. Katya is an Ukrainian-American doctor stationed at a makeshift medical clinic in St. Michael's Monastery; Misha is an engineer originally from Pripyat, who has lived in Kyiv since his wife's death; Slava is a fiery young activist whose past hardships steel her determination in the face of persecution; and Aleksandr Ivanovich, a former KGB agent, who climbs atop a burned-out police bus at Independence Square and plays the piano.

While unfolding an especially moving story of quiet beauty and love in a time of terror, I Will Die in a Foreign Land is an ambitious, intimate, and haunting portrait of human perseverance and empathy.

About Kalani Pickhart

Kalani Pickhart holds an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. She is the recipient of research fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence for Eastern European and Eurasian Studies. I Will Die in a Foreign Land is her first novel.


Reviews

I’m inhaling reads of Ukraine. They add more historical context and credibility to these incredibly resilient people with their determination and relentlessness to secure the freedom they have come to value. Democracy. Did you know “Ukraine” means country? This is a razor sharp story of what transpi......more

Goodreads review by David

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine is, sadly, dominating the news right now. Kalani Pickhart’s debut, I Will Die in a Foreign Land, is set in Kyiv eight years earlier, during the 2014 Maidan Revolution, and depicts the events of 2014 from the vantage of several sympathetic characters. For what it aims to......more

Goodreads review by Ron

Last fall, Kalani Pickhart published a debut novel called “I Will Die in a Foreign Land.” To be honest — unknown author, tiny press, little publicity — I just set it aside. But through the intervention of some literary angel or my own laziness, the book kept hanging around the living room. Finally,......more

Goodreads review by Lisa

Update 10/30/2022: Refreshed and restored I have continued thinking of this stellar work and I am bumping my rating up to 5 stars. Kalani Pickhart's debut novel I Will Die in a Foreign Land deals with events in Russia, Ukraine, and Czechoslovakia over the past 100 years. The main part of her story is......more