she is from mariupol

★Introduction

"If you've seen what I've seen," my mother kept repeating.

"Dear God, please let me feel what she feels, just for a moment," the daughter said years later.

One day when Natasha Wardin was ten years old, her mother went out and never came back. Later, she learned that her mother had sunk herself in the Regnitz River without leaving a single word; her father was drinking heavily and buried in Russian books all day long. — Only after that did the author realize that he knew nothing about her except that she was from Mariupol and was deported from Ukraine as a forced laborer to Germany in 1943. With few clues, Natasha Woodin pieced together the broken tiles little by little, and she found that the family's past is a great mystery, a historical fable about the suffering in Eastern Europe ... the author has completely restored a mother's personal history, family history, and twentieth-century tumultuous history in a fascinating way. Although this is a work of non-fiction, it is more magical, more dramatic, and more thrilling than a work of fiction.

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★Editor's recommendation

◎A family history, the epitome of a century-old world disaster

◎A record of disasters in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, filling the gap in the publication of Eastern labor history in World War II

◎A writer comparable to Winfred Sebald, using words to rescue the lost life and memory book

◎Rewrite the history of Eastern Europe, stitch together the fragments of history, and completely restore the personal history of grief. The 12 million oriental laborers are by no means a footnote to the history of the Holocaust, showing the panorama of the tragedy of European civilization and revealing the unknown fate of Ukrainians

◎Won the second largest German literary award "Leipzig Book Award" (non-fiction category), Deblin Award, German Literature Online, "Der Spiegel", "Die Zeit", "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", "Süddeutsche Zeitung", etc. highly praised

◎Translated into French, Lebanese, Italian, Lithuanian, Dutch, Spanish, Ukrainian, Arabic and other languages ​​as soon as it is published, it has long been at the top of the German book list

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★Media Comments

A panorama of the century unfolded in family history...a marvelous piece of work.

——"Der Spiegel"

…Only through personal narratives can we know how historical events shaped a person's experience and how current events fundamentally shape a person's life. It is no accident that this work makes people see the shadow of the great German memory artist Sebald salvaging lost lives from oblivion.

— Sigrid Löffler, 2015 Deblin Prize presentation speech

Important text on forgetting. ... this gripping masterpiece goes well beyond the search for one's family roots.

- German Literature Online

Human life is so small and so rich, and it disappears so silently in the pulverizer of history. This is what "She Comes from Mariupol" tells. The author wanders and searches in fiction and research, reconstruction and memory. ... The author's language is plain and unpretentious, but that's all the more fitting. ... very great and influential art.

——Jörg Magenau, German Radio Culture

Unpredictable and eye-popping clues are intertwined, just like a crime suspense film, every detail adds tension, and a series of unbelievable accidents arise... "She is from Mariupol" is the epitome of the history of disasters in the twentieth century , and its influence continues to this day.

—Helmut Böttiger, Die Zeit

In recent years there have been several works about the nightmares of the twentieth century, as far away as they are recorded in the archives, as far as violence is concerned. Although Natasha Woodin only shows a small part of what is going on, her story brings the reader so close that we see ourselves in it.

—— "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"

Natasha Woodin has established a writing paradigm that is both classic and extraordinary.

— Hans-Peter Kunisch, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Revolutions, hunger, world wars, civil wars, the Gulag, this is a more dramatic family story. …Natasha Woodin has inherited what historians seem to be unable to continue: bringing the history of forced labor and prisoners of war to the public eye.

- Deutsche Radio

This book is fascinating, and the first sentence at the beginning makes my heart slip into my throat. It is tragic and shocking, and it is difficult to stop my fingers from turning the pages. ...in the line of Hertha Miller and Kertes Imre.

——"Cologne City News"

...a great book against silence. It is a fresh, vivid, questioning, desperate and moving history. Of course, it was also full of pain. This is a tear-jerking book, a personal history written with multiple threads and searches.

——Bavaria Radio 2 Culture Channel

With limited information, Woodin painstakingly pieced together the enigmatic fragments of family history, resulting in this acclaimed, soulful masterpiece that rivals WG Sebald's. ... "She Came from Mariupol" filled the gap in the field of literature, and set up a monument for thousands of Eastern European people through the affectionate tracing of the mother's family.

——New Books in German

The history of labor in the East in Nazi Germany is one of those lesser-known and often out-of-focus historical issues that this book calls attention to. Sometimes it's like a mystery novel, you can't stop in front of this book, because you don't know what Natasha Woodin is going to fill in the hole. Much has surfaced in history, but much remains unsaid. This is what writing family history is all about.

——Beyond History

This book once again uncovered a scar in German history. Many archival materials were deliberately destroyed, and the memory disappeared with the death of the person concerned, and most of the insiders remained silent even if they were still alive. … It is believed that as the book spreads, this obscured and forgotten history will re-enter public memory.

——China "Literary News"