{"product_id":"undefeatable-odesa-in-love-and-war-by-julian-evans","title":"Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War by Julian Evans","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is an important book, not just an eyewitness account of a country besieged, but a chronicle of the war, with helpful background both literary and political. Its great achievement is presenting its human face – resolute and heroic\" – Paul Theroux\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1994, Julian Evans discovered the city of Odesa by accident at the end of a ten-day boat journey down the Dnipro river from Kyiv to Crimea.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe fell in love with the crumbling, romantic, piecrust-baroque boom town whose port had been a gateway for smugglers, immigrants, divas and poets for 200 years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReturning five years later, he fell in love with one of Odesa’s women, married her in a monastery opposite the railway station, and began a decades-long relationship with both of them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProfoundly personal, \u003cem\u003eUndefeatable\u003c\/em\u003e tells the story of Evans’ involvement with the city over nearly thirty years, living in the formerly Jewish and criminal Moldavanka neighbourhood that Isaac Babel made famous in his\u003cem\u003e Odesa Stories\u003c\/em\u003e, and of his life with his Ukrainian family.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut when war comes with Russia’s seizure of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, he discovers that his wife Natasha’s parents have stopped speaking to each other because they are on opposite sides of the conflict.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTensions between family and friends become a microcosm of the city’s own continuously shifting, sometimes contradictory atmosphere, intensifying with Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt this point, Evans decides to go back to live in the city under bombardment, and to the front line, ‘\u003ci\u003ebecause the feeling you’re not where you belong, it bugs you\u003c\/i\u003e’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePaperback\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pushkin House Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57465930613114,"sku":null,"price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0510\/3406\/3009\/files\/9781917881043.jpg?v=1793030512","url":"https:\/\/shop.pushkinhouse.org\/products\/undefeatable-odesa-in-love-and-war-by-julian-evans","provider":"Pushkin House Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}