Your Presence Is Mandatory

English language

Published 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

ISBN:: 978-1-63973-153-4

(1 review)

A riveting debut novel, based on real events, about a Ukrainian World War II veteran with a secret that could land him in the Gulag, and his family who are forced to live in the shadow of all he has not told them.

Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He …

A riveting debut novel, based on real events, about a Ukrainian World War II veteran with a secret that could land him in the Gulag, and his family who are forced to live in the shadow of all he has not told them.

Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family. Spanning seven decades between World War II and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, Your Presence Is Mandatory traces the effect Yefim's coverup had on the lives of Nina, their two children and grandchildren.

From Germany's prison camps and forced labor system to the Soviet culture of pride and paranoia, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light on one family caught between two totalitarian regimes, and the grace they find in the course of their survival.

1 edition

Annie the Book reviewed Your Presence Is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk

Your Presence is Mandatory, by Sasha Vasilyuk

4 stars

Yefim Shulman is a man of secrets. He is also a man who tries very hard to make it look like he has no secrets. Secrets are a very dangerous thing to have in the paranoia of the Soviet Union. We know what Yefim’s secret is very early in Sasha Vasilyuk’s affecting novel, Your Presence is Mandatory: shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Yefim was one of millions of Red Army troops taken prisoner. Where prisoners of war are, in other countries, viewed with sympathy and, perhaps, relief that they were out of combat, Soviet authorities viewed their POWs as tainted by contact with the West. They were viewed as traitors for “letting” themselves be captured instead of killed and thousands were sent to the gulags or worse. Josef Stalin took such a hard line against POWs that he did not try to rescue his own captured …

Yefim Shulman is a man of secrets. He is also a man who tries very hard to make it look like he has no secrets. Secrets are a very dangerous thing to have in the paranoia of the Soviet Union. We know what Yefim’s secret is very early in Sasha Vasilyuk’s affecting novel, Your Presence is Mandatory: shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Yefim was one of millions of Red Army troops taken prisoner. Where prisoners of war are, in other countries, viewed with sympathy and, perhaps, relief that they were out of combat, Soviet authorities viewed their POWs as tainted by contact with the West. They were viewed as traitors for “letting” themselves be captured instead of killed and thousands were sent to the gulags or worse. Josef Stalin took such a hard line against POWs that he did not try to rescue his own captured son, who later died at Sachsenhausen...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.