Donezk Girl
(Ukrainian title Доця)
Author: Tamara Duda
Book for: Adults
Language: German, translated from Ukrainian by Annegret Becker, Lukas Joura and Alexander Kratochvil
Publisher / Series: Friedrich Mauke Verlag
Year of edition: 2025
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 368
Dimensions: 205 x 129 x 29 mm
Weight: 520 g
ISBN: 978-3-948259-12-9
Description:
„Donetsk, spring 2014. A young woman known as Elfe came to Donbas from Volhynia as a young girl to live with her grandmother from then on. Here she holds her own against a grey everyday life, building a livelihood for herself as a glass designer and successful entrepreneur — against all odds. But then armed men appear, and Russian soldiers arrive, initially covertly, then openly. Elfe begins to resist the invasion that threatens to take everything from her.
In her novel, Tamara Duda draws on her own experience to describe how Donetsk changed in 2014, at first imperceptibly, then more and more irrevocably. How people, houses and entire neighborhoods were destroyed, how looting and violence became part of everyday life, how the Russian occupiers advanced further and further, and how the local population responded.
The novel »Töchterchen« became an instant bestseller in Ukraine when it was published in 2019 and was immediately chosen as »BBC Book of the Year«. Never before had the events of 2014 in eastern Ukraine, the first phase of the Russian invasion, been portrayed so honestly, so authentically, so movingly, and moreover from a woman’s perspective. Everything recounted is based on actual events. Like a film, the story unfolds before the readers’ eyes, full of suspense and pace. There is hardly any time to catch one’s breath. The book is already a classic of (anti-)war literature. An unequivocal recommendation to read.“ Mauke Verlag
