All Lara's Wars

Description

The true story of one woman's struggle to save her sons from radicalization by Chechen partisans, as told by a seasoned war reporter. In All Lara's Wars, the great events of the last half-century--the realignment of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise in the Middle East of ISIS and its quest for a new Caliphate--converge in this account of a Chechen-Georgian family whose two sons become radicalized, and how their mother--Lara--travels to Syria by bus and at great risk, not to join them but to bring them home. By then, the older son is a high level commander and the younger son a respected soldier in ISIS's army. The story is told with a sense of wonder at the contemporary world and all the ways it resembles a primitive and violent land where all struggles are to the death, and there is an epic battle going on between forces of good and evil that cannot be understood other than as mythic and larger than life. Lara is a Kist--one of a tiny ethnicity that crossed the Caucasus mountains a century ago to settle in the remote Pankisi Gorge in northern Georgia, a peaceful and isolated paradise. She married a Chechen, moved to Grozny, and became the mother of two sons. When war came to Chechnya, she took her children home to the safe Georgian valley, and later sent them to Western Europe to live with their father--to protect them from the influence of the radical Islamic freedom fighters who had come to the Pankisi Gorge as refugees from the Chechnyan wars. As in all of Wojciech Jagielski's books, he tells here the story of any modern war, how the individual lives of civilians and combatants are obliterated in the sweep of the larger narrative--and how the humanity of these individual lives is revealed, and the price paid in human endurance and persistence and loss. Jagielski observes, listening to Lara and letting her story emerge through the filter of his literary skill. This unusual reportage tells us the facts of the Chechnyan wars and the reality of the Syrian war from the viewpoint of ISIS recruits, but it is also the true account of one ordinary family that became part of the larger tragedy that has claimed so many victims in recent years.

Formerly a reporter at Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's first and biggest independent daily, Wojciech Jagielski has been witness to some of the most important political events of the end of the twentieth century. He is the recipient of several of Poland's most prestigious awards for journalism, including a Bene Merito honorary decoration from the Polish government and the Dariusz Fikus Award for excellence in journalism. Seen by many as the literary heir to Ryszard Kapuscinski, he is the author of several books of in-depth reportage, including Towers of Stone- The Battle of Wills in Chechnya, which won Italy's Letterature dal Fronte Award; The Night Wanderers- Uganda's Children and the Lord's Resistance Army; and Burning the Grass- At the Heart of Change in South Africa, 1990-2011, all published by Seven Stories Press. Arguably Poland's best-known contemporary nonfiction writer, about whom Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote "Jagielski has already achieved recognition for his reporting on the most inflamed points around the globe," Jagielski lives outside of Warsaw. Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by several of Poland's leading contemporary novelists and reportage authors, as well as crime fiction, poetry, and children's books. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. She is a mentor for the Emerging Translators' Mentorship Programme, and former co-chair of the UK Translators Association.

"All Lara's Wars is an epic but intimate journey through the wreckage caused by the end of the Soviet Union in the Caucasus, taking us all the way from a small village in Georgia to war in Chechnya to the inferno of the Syrian conflict. At its center is a memorable portrait of Lara, a Caucasian Mother Courage, who loses her beloved menfolk in a chain of wars. Along the way we see how idealism was lost and nationalist struggles morphed into violent radical Islam. Wojciech Jagielski has researched and written a very original and powerful book." -Thomas de Waal, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Europe, author of The Caucasus: An Introduction "All Lara's Wars is narrative nonfiction at its best. Gripping, moving, informative and ultimately heart-breaking, it stayed on my mind even after I laid it aside for the day, and it's still on my mind now and will be for a long time. I've read several of Jagielski's previous books, admiring them all. But this one seems to me the finest, just as he seems the finest of the many first-rate Polish literary journalists. This volume has been beautifully translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones." -Steve Yarbrough, author of The Unmade World "Wojciech Jagielski has a well-deserved reputation as a serious and sensitive writer who cares deeply about people, history and the truth. He does not shy away from the messy and often painful reality, but translates it into limpid, elegant prose. All Lara's Wars is a powerful, moving, disturbing and important work of both literature and reporting." -Jason Burke, author of The 9/11 Wars