The Year the River Froze Twice
By Inga Abebele
2017
First Published
3.77
Average Rating
445
Number of Pages
Andrievs Radvilis is a former jockey on the Riga trotting track whose solitary retirement is interrupted when a young journalist comes to interview him about his career. Their meeting leads to a journey of reminiscence across Latvia, never straying far from the mighty Daugava river, which flows through the story as Radvilis recalls his early life. The weeks leading up to the fateful date of 25 March 1949, when Stalin launched his deportation campaign in Soviet Latvia, form the main historical backdrop of this novel. As an independent-minded man who would not engage with Stalinism nor compromise with the truth, Radvilis is imprisoned and blacklisted. Bitter experience of war, love and politics lead him to trust horses more than people.
Avg Rating
3.77
Number of Ratings
235
5 STARS
24%
4 STARS
40%
3 STARS
28%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
Inga Abebele
Author · 7 books
Inga Ābele is a Latvian novelist, poet, and playwright. Her novel High Tide received the 2008 Latvian Literature Award, and the 2009 Baltic Assembly Award in Literature. Her works have been translated into Swedish, English, French, and Russian, among others, and have appeared in such anthologies as New European Poets, Best European Fiction 2010, and Short Stories without Borders: Young Writers for a New Europe. Her most recent book, Ants and Bumblebees, is a collection of short stories.
