The Russian Daughter

Sarah Klassen’s quiet, delicately written new novel is rooted in family, community, and everyday work—set in what is now Ukraine, during the years of the Russian Revolution. The Russian Daughter begins in an idyllic country village; there Amalia and Isaak Albrecht, a prosperous young Mennonite couple, long to have children. They hear of a Russian baby they can adopt; over the next years their family twists, alters, and faces very unexpected challenges.

At the novel’s centre is the surprising and defiant Sofia, the adopted Russian daughter, so unlike everyone around her and yet still loved. Shaken again and again by accidents, misapprehensions, and the fierce currents of history, the Albrecht family must seek to understand itself in new and demanding ways.

Manitoba writer Sarah Klassen is the respected and acclaimed Manitoba author of three previous works of fiction and eight collections of poetry. Her first book, in 1988, Journey to Yalta, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Other awards include the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award for A Curious Beatitude (2006). In 2014 Klassen’s novel The Wittenbergs was the winner of the Margaret McWilliams Award for Popular History. The Russian Daughter is her first historical novel.