Sharon Olds divides this new book into five sections
- ' Blood', ' Tin', ' ' Straw', ' ' Fire' & ' Light'
- each made up

...

Sharon Olds divides this new book into five sections
- ' Blood', ' Tin', ' ' Straw', ' ' Fire' & ' Light'
- each made up

...

The central event of European history has been overlooked. In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi & Soviet regimes starved, shot, & gassed to death fourteen million people in borderlands between Berlin & Moscow. In these bloodlands, today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland & the eastern Baltic coast, an average of more than a million civilians were killed annually by the Nazi & Soviet regimes during twelve years that both Hitler & Stalin were in power, from 1933 to 1944.

Together Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union ruled most of the Eurasian landmass, but they killed chiefly, indeed almost entirely, in the bloodlands. Beyond the bloodlands, the regimes of Hitler & Stalin together, in their vast domains from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, deliberately killed no more than three million civilians in these years. If the compact area of the bloodlands is included, the figure rises to seventeen million souls.

The centre of gravity of modern European history is here, in the frontier zones & lands between states advocating European ideologies, who assaulted European peoples, & eradicated an established European order. The center of gravity of modern European history is a black hole.

Today Stalin's crimes are associated with Russia, & Hitler's with Germany: these countries were not the main sites of mass killing. People were killed in the lands between, where most of Europe's Jews lived, where Hitler & Stalin's plans overlapped, & where the Wehrmacht & the Red Army fought, & where the Soviet NKVD & the German SS concentrated their forces.





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Like no poetry you've ever known before, Fred D' Aguiar's novel-in-verse sweeps you up in the scintillating story of a young female slave who falls in love with the son of the plantation owner & runs away with him in search of a new life. En route they are rescued by an old man who has organised a secret underground railroad to help slaves escape, but they become separated from each other: Faith, the woman, is sold back into slavery & Christy, her lover, punished with forced labour. The novel is narrated by their son who is stuck in time until their story is told. Using the intricate rhyme-scheme of Byron's wonderfully picaresque Don Juan, D' Aguiar wittily plays with language to create poetry that is dazzling in its inventiveness whilst being utterly readable. Despite the seriousness of its subject matter, Bloodlines is full of humour, satire, experiment &, above all, life. Its characters are, like the language, brim-full of energy & very sympathetic as they struggle against vicissitude. Read this book fast like a novel, savour every word like a poem, do both, the choice is yours. ...

Like no poetry you've ever known before, Fred D' Aguiar's novel-in-verse sweeps you up in the scintillating story of a young female slave who falls in love with the son of the plantation owner & runs away with him in search of a new life. En route they are rescued by an old man who has organised a secret underground railroad to help slaves escape, but they become separated from each other: Faith, the woman, is sold back into slavery & Christy, her lover, punished with forced labour. The novel is narrated by their son who is stuck in time until their story is told. Using the intricate rhyme-scheme of Byron's wonderfully picaresque Don Juan, D' Aguiar wittily plays with language to create poetry that is dazzling in its inventiveness whilst being utterly readable. Despite the seriousness of its subject matter, Bloodines is full of humour, satire, experiment &, above all, life. Its characters are, like the language, brim-full of energy & very sympathetic as they struggle against vicissitude. Read this book fast like a novel, savour every word like a poem, do both, the choice is yours. ...