Purge
by Sofi Oksanen
Two Estonian women. Fifty years of occupation between them.
you want to understand Soviet occupation through the bodies of the women who survived it
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Two women in rural Estonia — one old, one young — whose stories interlock across fifty years of Soviet occupation, trafficking, and survival. Oksanen is Finnish-Estonian and writes from inside both traditions. The novel moves between 1992 and the 1940s with mounting dread, each revelation recontextualizing what came before. The most visceral European dispatch about what Soviet occupation did to women's bodies and women's silence. Won every major Finnish and Nordic literary prize. Essential.
WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES
- Setting
- Finland • Eastern Europe
- Voice
- Written by a Estonian author
- Themes
- After EmpireGenerations
