Heavy Sand

Heavy Sand caused a sensation on its first Soviet publication because of its unprecedented treatment of Jewish suffering and heroism during the Second World War. One of the most powerful novels to come out of Russia in recent years, it tells the warm but ultimately searing tale of a large and closely knit Russian Jewish family from the beginning of the century to the end of the war, a family of artisans living and working side by side with Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Belorussians in a small town in the Chernigov province.