Catastrophe
Published on 9. November 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
296 pages
978-0-6397-2520-8 (ISBN)
Description
Exiled ballerina Lena Sergeyevna lies in hospital in New York, dying of cancer. Desperate to reconcile with her estranged daughter, she begins to reveal the truth about her flight from the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster where her husband Yuri, a nuclear physicist, disappeared while performing top-secret research. We discover that Lena's former life involved deep compromises for which she has paid a heavy price in shame and self-loathing. What happened to Yuri, was he somehow involved in the 'accident', and what made Lena leave the USSR and take up exotic dancing in the US? Set in a geopolitical hotspot, Ukraine, this intelligent memoir-thriller explores the struggle for self-expression, the triumph of truth over deception, and the impact on the human psyche of personal and global catastrophe.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
South Africa
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
507 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-6397-2520-8 (9780639725208)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
https://www.iansutherland.co.za/Ian successfully debuted as a novelist in 2018 with his WW II thriller, Featherstream after graduating with an MA in Creative Writing (UCT) under the supervision of Etienne van Heerden. Ian's latest novel Catastrophe is set in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Disaster in Ukraine, USSR. His fascination with the event was sparked by a real-time case study in his Mechanical Engineering degree and led to several years of intensive research. Ian has an MBA from Columbia University and has worked in strategy consulting and finance in New York, Sydney and Cape Town, where he currently resides. Passionate about history and travel, Ian enjoys intense, immersive research including language studies.