Open and free to all literature friends we discuss the novel Baba Dunja's last love by Alina Bronsky. Books are available to buy from the library beforehand.
"If I still let people surprise me at my age, I wouldn’t have time to brush my teeth."
Baba Dunja is a Chernobyl returnee. The former nurse and her neighbours create a new life for themselves in a no-man’s land where – in the wake of the reactor disaster – the rest of the world fears the ticking Geiger counter and radioactive forest fruits. But they have everything they need – water from a well, vegetables from their own garden, even sometimes electricity but, most important of all, peace and quiet. While the terminally ill Petrov passes the time reading love poems in his hammock, Marja takes up with the almost 100-year-old Sidorow and Baba Dunja writes letters to her daughter. Until one day, a stranger turns up in the village – and once again the community faces liquidation.
Alina Bronsky tells the story of a village that shouldn’t exist anymore and of an unusual woman who late in life finds her own self-designed paradise – a magical and absorbing modern-day tale, full of energy and poetry, love and humour.
Alina Bronsky was born in 1978 in Yekaterinburg/Russia, spent her childhood on the Asian side of the Ural Mountains and her youth in Marburg and Darmstadt. She now lives in Berlin. Her novels Broken Glass Park and The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, were critically acclaimed bestsellers. The English translation of the latter was chosen as one of the best books in 2011 by Publisher’s Weekly. Broken Glass Park has since become popular reading in schools and was recently adapted for film.
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