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A moving novel about a little girl, Lastočka, who is adopted from an orphanage by a Russian woman, Tamara, in Chisinau in the 1980s. A moving story about childhood, language, identity, and trauma in the final years of Soviet Moldova.
Garden of Glass (2018) is the second novel by Moldovan writer Tatiana Țîbuleac. The story is narrated by an adult Lastochka, who recalls her childhood in Chisinau in short, fragmentary chapters in the 1980s. As a little girl from an orphanage, she is adopted by a strict Russian woman Tamara Pavlovna, who forces her to collect and wash empty bottles on the streets. Their Garden of Glass becomes a symbol of the fragile and harsh world in which Lastochka grows up.
The novel powerfully depicts everyday life in the last years of Soviet communism in Moldova – poverty, alcoholism, corruption and the deep linguistic and cultural divisions between the Russian and Romanian (Moldovan) languages. Lastochka is torn between two worlds: her adoptive mother’s Russian and her own mother tongue, which becomes a metaphor for the broader trauma of identity and belonging.
Țîbuleac writes raw, poetically, and without sentimentality. Her style is precise, fragmentary, and exceptionally powerful in portraying a child's perspective. The book is at once a coming-of-age story, a family drama, and a subtle political portrait of a crumbling empire. One of the most notable contemporary Eastern European novels, praised for its emotional depth, literary quality, and universality of theme. Highly recommended for fans of intense, autobiographically tinged prose.
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