Warm Arctic Nights

Fiction. Driven by an unquenchable thirst for the unknown and boundless imagination, a boy learns about the nature of life in an idyllic pre-WW II Poland and nightmarish WW II Ukraine. Life in Yuriy Tarnawsky's latest novel is shown to have the warmth and beauty of the eternal arctic night.

By turns reminiscent of Zweig's The World of Yesterday and Kosinsky's The Painted Bird, Yuriy Tarnawsky's WARM ARCTIC NIGHTS is a swift and deeply engrossing fictive memoir of an idyllic childhood whose martial and masculine tenets presage an onslaught of inhumanity and fear. Steeped in subtle irony and the surreal, it is also a sui generis act of remembrance, memorial, and love.--Michael Mejia

For those unfamiliar with Tarnawsky's work, WARM ARCTIC NIGHTS makes a perfect place to start--especially now, when debates over fascism and refugees are sadly once again at the forefront of the news... Lyrical, emotional, and compulsively readable, WARM ARCTIC NIGHTS and THE IGUANAS OF HEAT make remarkable additions to what was already a powerful body of work. Both are heartily recommended.--A. D. Jameson