Kozlowski

A single event comes to define a man’s life: the mysterious disappearance in April 1940 of 4,000 of his fellow prisoners from the NKVD-run prison camp of Starobelsk in Ukraine. KOZŁOWSKI tells the story of a young army doctor whose experiences during the Second World War have left him incomplete. Living in exile in London, his only defence against the past is to forget it. This is a skill which he practices assiduously, until he has perfected it and the past cannot affect him - or so he thinks. In reality, the past is the only place he longs to be, and he is repeatedly drawn back to it, his survival threatened again and again. ‘In this heartbreaking novel, Jane Rogoyska writes with tragic power about one of the last century's foulest crimes - Stalin's mass murder of his Polish prisoners in 1940. In a fiction boldly using real names and events, she brings the victims of Katyń and the other murder sites, together with their families and the handful of traumatised survivors, back to brief life and hope.’ NEAL ASCHERSON Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2020 Shortlisted for Chambéry's Festival du premier Roman Prize 2020 Jane's non-fiction account of the Katyń massacre is now out, published by One World