SIBERIAN HAIKU HC GN (C: 0-1-0)

One morning in June 1941, in a quiet village in central Lithuania, 8-year-old Algiukas awakes to the sound of Russian soldiers pounding on the door. His family is given 10 minutes to pack up their things. An airless freight train carries them to the snowy plains of the Siberian taiga. There, in the distant, dismal North, they begin a life marked by endless hunger and unrelenting cold. And yet the darkness of exile is lightened, for Algiukas, by flights of imagination. Drawing on her father’s exile in Siberia, writer Jurga Vile brings to light a neglected episode from the history of the Soviet Union.