Gripping, beautifully illustrated, and uncannily relevant. Like the greatest works of art, Victor, a Soldier’s Story transforms an individual fate, with all its twists and conflicting allegiances and setbacks, into a lens on history. I loved it!
— Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or
Victor, a Soldier’s Story
Victor Torkanovsky, a Jewish university student with poor eyesight, enlists in the Red Army when Germany invades the USSR during World War II. Briefly assigned to the secret police during the Siege of Leningrad, he nearly starves as the city’s food supply is cut off. He then fights in the Battle of Stalingrad as an ordinary soldier and survives harrowing encounters with German troops and a Soviet military tribunal before discovering the ruins of his ancestral home in Ukraine during the liberation of Kyiv.
In the Soviet Union, Victor did not talk about his wartime experiences because they challenged official accounts. Toward the end of his life, he shared them with his grandchildren. They worked with award-winning illustrator Igor Karash to illuminate this story of courage, hardship, luck, and moral compromise—one that encapsulates the experiences of Soviet soldiers and civilians, millions of whom did not survive to see Hitler defeated or Stalin dead.
Hardcover
- ISBN
- 9781954276741
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781954276758
Eugene Ostashevsky is a poet, translator, and professor at New York University. He is the co-author of Victor, a Soldier’s Story (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in June 2027), a graphic memoir of his grandfather’s experience as a Soviet soldier in World War II. His poetry collections include The Feeling Sonnets, which revisits the Siege of Leningrad from the point of view of a naturalized American citizen living in Germany, and his poems have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Paris Review, and Best American Poetry. Among other honors, he has received the National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association and the City of Münster Prize for International Poetry. Born in Leningrad, he now lives in Brooklyn and Berlin.
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Luba Ostashevsky teaches chemistry at a high school in Brooklyn and works as a literary agent. Her books include the co-authored Victor, a Soldier’s Story (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in June 2027), a graphic memoir of her grandfather’s experience as a Soviet soldier in World War II, and the poetry chapbook Where Things Start. She is the former senior editor at Palgrave Macmillan and former deputy editor of Nautilus Magazine. Born in Leningrad, she now lives in Queens.
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Igor Karash is a multi-award-winning illustrator. His artist profile is part of TASCHEN’s The Illustrator: 100 Best from Around the World. Among other books, he is the illustrator of Victor, a Soldier’s Story (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in June 2027); Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel; and illustrated editions of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, published by the Folio Society in London. For his series of illustrations for Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Karash was awarded the Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators in New York. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Karash earned his master’s degree in book design and illustration at Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts in Ukraine, has taught in the Department of Art, Design and Art History (DADAH) at Webster University, and now lives in St. Louis.
visit author page »Praise for Victor, a Soldier’s Story
Victor, a Soldier’s Story is a haunting graphic memoir that leaves a real legacy in the genre of comics. Igor Karash is working at the highest levels of design, drawing, and visual storytelling, and the Ostashevskys’ tale has the potential to inspire many hearts and minds around the globe with the vast scope of this incredible story.
— John Hendrix, author and illustrator of The Faithful Spy and The Mythmakers
With exquisite illustrations and succinct prose, Victor, a Soldier’s Story deftly explores the trauma of war and the enduring loss that seeps into generations despite silence and distance. A moving and heartbreaking story that is important to remember and to uphold.
— Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop and The Lion Women of Tehran
Victor, a Soldier’s Story takes the vast machinery of war and shrinks it to the size that matters most: one family, one grandfather, and one long-buried inheritance of terror, endurance, and memory. A powerful graphic memoir, it brings the Siege of Leningrad and the moral complexity of Jewish life in the Soviet century back into living view.
— Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Stowaway and The Aviator and the Showman