Děti Volhy – Jachina Guzel (2023)

Russia in 1916. On the lower Volga, where German emigrants have found a home since the 18th century, the stereotypical days of Jakob Ivanovich Bach flow by. The thirty-two-year-old German teacher has such an unremarkable appearance and life that nothing can be said about him at all. Until landowner Grimm from the opposite bank asks him to teach his seventeen-year-old daughter Klára German. The lessons take place under special circumstances – the girl is forbidden to look at a strange man, so she must be hidden behind a screen. Klára's quiet voice soon fills Bach's life, like air fills an empty vessel. The student herself begins to strive for closeness and sends Bach intimate letters through the books they exchange. Thus, weeks and months pass, and two completely different, lonely people fall in love with each other. However, their love cannot escape the events brought about by the rise of the Bolsheviks to power. Great history enters Bach's life, forcing him to face terrible trials, so that he matures into a strong personality, as powerful as the Volga River, in whose bends he will live his entire life. Russian writer Guzel Yachina, of Tatar roots and author of the bestseller Zulejka Opens Her Eyes, returns in her second novel Children of the Volga to the traumas of Soviet history, when the revolutionary...