#  No Country for Love: Book Talk by Yaroslav Trofimov 

 



    ![No Country for Love by Yaroslav Trofimov book cover](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/huri/files/no_country_for_love_cover.jpg?h=5d378ddc&itok=ycWEiZs1) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **February 12, 2025** 

 05:00PM - 06:30PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **CGIS-Knafel/North Building, 2nd Floor, Room K-262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138**  



 

 [ Watch on YouTube arrow\_circle\_right ](https://youtube.com/live/tAJpm9MGi7w) 

 



 

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A book talk by [**Yaroslav Trofimov**](https://yarotrof.com/), Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.

Moderated by [**Oleh Kotsyuba**](https://huri.harvard.edu/people/oleh-kotsyuba), Director of Print and Digital Publications, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University.

**IN-PERSON and ONLINE** via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online.

## About the Book

   ![No Country for Love by Yaroslav Trofimov book cover](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/no_country_for_love_cover.jpg?itok=MWJ_3B8L) 

 

A sweeping, stunningly ambitious novel about a young Ukrainian girl arriving in Kharkiv in 1930, determined to contribute to the future of her country, and her struggle to survive the devastation and trauma that ravage Ukraine.

Seventeen-year-old Debora Rosenbaum, ambitious and in love with literature, arrives in the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kharkiv, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; 1930 is a new dawn, the Soviet era, where skyscrapers go up overnight. Debora finds work and meets a dashing young officer named Samuel who is training to become a fighter pilot. They fall in love, and begin to mix with Ukraine's new cultural elite.  
  
But Debora's prospects — and Ukraine's — soon dim. State-induced famine rolls through the over-harvested countryside, and any deviation from Moscow-dictated ideology is punished by disappearance. When Samuel is sentenced to ten years' hard labour, Deborah is left on her own with a baby. And this is only the beginning. As advancing Nazi armies move through Ukraine during World War II, its yellow fields of wheat run red with blood. Forced to renounce the man she loves, her identity and even her name, Debora also learns to endure, manipulate, and resist.  
  
*No Country for Love* follows the hard choices Debora makes as Ukraine, caught between two totalitarian ideologies, turns into the deadliest place in the world — while she tries to protect those she loves most. \[[Source](https://yarotrof.com/)\]

## About the Speaker

   ![Yaroslav Trofimov](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/yaroslav_trofimov.jpg?itok=Aa64Xtpu) 

 

Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel. He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent of *The Wall Street Journal* since 1999, and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023, for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022, for his work on Afghanistan. His honors include an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of India as well as the Washington Institute gold medal for the best book on the Middle East. He holds an MA from New York University and speaks nearly a dozen languages.

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*This event is organized by Harvard's* [*Ukrainian Research Institute*](https://huri.harvard.edu/) *(HURI) as part of* *the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.*

*Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Hanna Leliv, HURI Events Logistics Coordinator, at* [*hleliv@fas.harvard.edu*](mailto:hleliv@fas.harvard.edu) *at least two weeks in advance of the session.*

*Watch videos of past HURI events on our* [*YouTube Channel*](https://www.youtube.com/user/huriyt) *and* [*subscribe*](https://web.lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/lists/huri-events-list.lists.fas.harvard.edu/) *to our email list to receive announcements about events and other activities.*



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Seminar in Ukrainian Studies ](/event-type/seminar-ukrainian-studies)
- [ Contemporary Literature ](/fields-expertise/contemporary-literature)
- [ Contemporary Ukraine ](/fields-expertise/contemporary-ukraine)
- [ Modern History ](/fields-expertise/modern-history)
 
 

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