"Spring 2022. War in Ukraine. I can't go to Russia right now. Not to the grave. And if I die now, my ashes should wait somewhere, until they can be taken to Oleg's ashes. Big catastrophes have many consequences that are invisible to the world."
Those who cannot or do not want to overcome their grief have another option: to learn to live with it. Olga Martynova spent four years writing this major essay after the death of her husband, the Russian poet Oleg Yuriev. She wants to learn how people deal with something that you can't really deal with, yet is also so unavoidable. Olga Martynova does not look for advice or consolation, but in her grief enters into a “conversation” that is as intimate as it is reflective, as shameless as it is intelligent – notably with famous texts on grief and death by prominent intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Joan Didion, Elias Canetti, and Emmanuel Lévinas. Understand me, says the incomprehensible. This harrowing book attempts to answer that question.
"One reads Olga Martynova's book with sympathy, respect and profit [...]." - Deutschlandfunk Büchermarkt, Angela Gutzeit
"Olga Martynova has added a weighty book to the not exactly small library of mourning literature." - WDR, Andreas Wirthensohn
"Martynova is a precise observer of even the smallest movements within herself - but also of the behaviour of the people around her." - Falter, Ulrich Rüdenauer
"Olga Martynova has presented a profound, sensitive and richly nuanced book about grief" - Literaturkritik.de, Thorsten Paprotny
"a great book" - rbb radio 3, Ingo Schulze
