At the borders of the Russian and Germanic empires, not a single woman emerges unscathed from the bloodthirsty madness of the 20th century. Three voices, three destinies shattered by masculine domination.
Ravensbrück, 1941. The French woman Violette is beautiful, too beautiful. The Nazis want to “re-educate” her. Smilškalni, 1953. Broken by rape, the Latvian woman Magda is abandoned by Kārlis, the father of her child. She survives in a kolkhoz alongside Lidija and Ilma, but desire puts their solidarity to a harsh test. Riga, 2006. Duks is lost in her life. She must grapple with this past that won’t pass, that of her family about which she is told nothing. Her investigation confronts her with the silences of Latvian history: the purges, the camps, the mass deportations, the collaboration, women’s bodies delivered to the worst experiments.
From secrets to denials, from unspoken truths to confessions, Duks traces the bonds that unite her to those who came before her. How can one exist as a woman when carrying within oneself the wound of generations that were violated, battered, made invisible?
