Young Heroes of the Soviet Union

One of the thrills of developing a writing practice is discovering the work of other authors.

Sometimes they’re figures from the distant past—Béla Zsolt, anyone?—and sometimes they’re real live people (and quite lovely ones at that).

One such writer is Alex Halberstadt. I learned about him completely by chance, through my copywriting work; a client was running a literary series at his Brooklyn bar and had booked Alex as a guest. At first, I didn’t catch the resonances in our stories; it was only after a chance prompt that I picked up his most recent book—“Young Heroes of the Soviet Union”—and was gobsmacked by the similarities. It’s in some regards a better-written and more poignant version of my own manuscript, minus the psychedelics but with vodka to balance it out (I understand under certain conditions, vodka can be considered a hallucinogen).

Born in Russia but partly raised in the States, Alex dives into many of the same themes as do I: Wrestling with the threads of epigenetic trauma, the stubborn silence of our ancestors, and the slow-burning (sometimes terrifying and incendiary) challenges of life as a Jew in Eastern Europe. Through his book, I began to understand how my own backstory extends back not decades, but centuries.

At times, Alex’s journey is an eerie mirror of my own. He travels back to Vinnytsia—the Ukrainian city that appears twice in my manuscript—in an attempt to learn the truth from his ailing grandfather, who incidentally is quite possibly Joseph Stalin’s last living bodyguard. And just as I would in Budapest, Alex finds out both much less—and much more—than he bargained for.

“Young Heroes” was published this time last year, which feels like a perfect excuse to revisit it (or check it out for the first time). It’s an extraordinary book, and I can’t recommend it enough.