The book offers a compelling analysis of Vladimir Putin's war on women, highlighting how sexual violence has been systematically weaponized throughout modern Russian history. It combines journalistic integrity with a feminist call to action, revealing the political motivations behind this strategy and its implications for women's rights and societal power dynamics in Russia. Through this lens, the author critiques the intersection of gender and politics in a regime that seeks to maintain control through oppression.
From a major internationally acclaimed writer--the author of Purge--who is poised to break out in the U.S. comes a ferociously plotted novel of intrigue, betrayal, and murder in the global fertility market. Helsinki, 2016. Olenka sits on a bench, watching a family play in a dog park. A stranger sits down beside her. Olenka startles; she would recognize this other woman anywhere. After all, Olenka was the one who ruined her life. And this woman may be about to do the same to Olenka. Yet, for a fragile moment, here they are, together--looking at their own children being raised by other people. Moving seamlessly between modern-day Finland and Ukraine in the early days of its post-Soviet independence, Dog Park is a keenly observed, dark and propulsive novel set at the intersection of East and West, centered on a web of exploitation and the commodification of the female body. Oksanen brings fearless psychological acuity to this captivating story about a woman unable to escape the memory of her lost child, the ruthless powers that still hunt her, and the lies that could well end up saving her.
From the internationally best-selling author of Purge and When the Doves
Disappeared, a spellbinding new novel set in present-day Helsinki, about a
young woman with a fantastical secret who is trying to solve the mystery of
her mother's death. When Anita Naakka jumps in front of an oncoming train, her
daughter, Norma, is left alone with the secret they have spent their lives
hiding: Norma has supernatural hair, sensitive to the slightest changes in her
mood--and the moods of those around her--moving of its own accord,
corkscrewing when danger is near. And so it is her hair that alerts her, while
she talks with a strange man at her mother's funeral, that her mother may not
have taken her own life. Setting out to reconstruct Anita's final months--
sifting through puzzling cell phone records, bank statements, video files--
Norma begins to realize that her mother knew more about her hair's powers than
she let on: a sinister truth beyond Norma's imagining. As Sofi Oksanen leads
us ever more deeply into Norma's world, weaving together past and present, she
gives us a dark family drama that is a searing portrait of both the
exploitation of women's bodies and the extremes to which people will go for
the sake of beauty.
1941: In Communist-ruled, war-ravaged Estonia, two men have deserted the Red Army - Roland, a fiercely principled freedom fighter, and his slippery cousin Edgar. When the Germans arrive, Roland goes into hiding, while Edgar abandons his unhappy wife, Juudit, and takes on a new identity as a loyal supporter of the Nazi regime. 1963: Estonia is again under Communist control, independence even further out of reach behind the Iron Curtain. Edgar is now a Soviet apparatchik, desperate to hide the secrets of his past life and stay close to those in power. But his fate remains entangled with Roland's, and with Juudit, who may hold the key to uncovering the truth ...
Deep in an Estonian forest, two women, one young, one old, are hiding. Zara
and Aliide have both survived lives of abuse. But this time their survival
depends on revealing the one thing history has taught them to keep safely
hidden: the truth. A haunting, intimate and gripping story of suspicion,
betrayal and retribution against a backdrop of Soviet oppression and European
war.
