Protect My Shadow
A touching novel about an immigrant and her daughter who grew up in Finland.
Leningrad, 1980s. Georgi offers Vera a home in a communal house, whose cardboard-thin walls demarcate little space for love. When Mauno Koivisto invites people of Ingrian background to Finland, Vera and Georgi Varissuolle move to Turku. Their daughter Nina starts school in a foreign country.
In a strong family, family relationships are an asset, but they also rub off. When Nina has children, transgenerational traumas make her doubt herself. What do you want to keep from the past, what do you want to forget? What is the place of an immigrant-or a personin general?
Publishing information
Reviews
"Soudakova's novel does the same as Juho Kuosmanen's movie adaptation of Rosa Liksom's novel Compartment No. 6: it humanises and brings our neighbours and their way of life from the other side of the frontier closer to us, shows them as individuals."
“Every person who has lived abroad finds plenty of familiar aspects in the novel, and even if you don’t possess this experience, Soudakova conveys those associated feelings well, making them comprehensible to every reader. Once you’ve left your home country, you’re spiritually left out of something and you’re unable to fill this hole – neither by assimilation nor social integration. … In describing this form of vagrancy, Soudakova is a master.”
“Anna Soudakova's prose is fresh and approachable while containing heavy themes. … the melancholic undertone is soothed by happy moments, above all by experiences of closeness between family or friends. The narrative flows with an overall subtle sense of life’s joy and a persevering attitude. Soudakova artfully carries different moods. Her text is flowing and effortless, sensitive and yet direct. You take pleasure in reading the novel, for the joy of hearing the story and meeting interesting characters.”
“Soudakova's beautiful sentences sink like a knife into butter. Protect My Shadow goes deep into the complexity and contradictions of human life, where everyone has to find their own means of survival. The work is wise and does good.”
“Protect My Shadow is a melancholic novel about outsiders and the longing for freedom. Pieces are served to the reader through small hints. There is so much to read in between the lines that the text sometimes vibrates with intergenerational tensions and the painful silence that the state has forced the individual into.”
