Alpine Ballad is, on the face of it, a novel about the flight for freedom made by two prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp somewhere in the Austrian Alps after they'd managed to escape. Four of Ivan Tsyareshka's fellow prisoners died after an unexploded bomb goes off, leaving a nearly-impenetrable cloud of dust and a lot of chaos. Ivan takes off, knowing that there's no way the others survived although he understands that it was only due to their deaths that he now has a chance at freedom. Alsatian dogs and soldiers are sent after him, but he's not going to give up, and eventually clears the camp area, heading toward the Alps with the plan to make it to Trieste, where he hopes to hook up with partisans. It isn't long, though, until he encounters another escapee, Giulia, who is in the camp as a political prisoner marked by a red triangle on her clothing. The novel follows their journey and their hopes as they take uncertain steps toward freedom.

Now, I say "on the face of it," because there's way more than just a simple escape going on here. The publishers released this particular edition in part as a reminder of the "human costs of war," a theme that just permeates this book. One major idea captured here is what Bykau refers to as "Entmenschung," referring to the dehumanizing practices of the Nazis, which he says is "the most dastardly of all evil deeds on earth," a concept Ivan totally understands. Once he was put into the camps and had the opportunity to observe what was going with "the underside of Nazism," he came to realize that "death was not the worst thing that could happen during the war."

How these ideas play out through the novel I will leave to others to discover. The story gives Ivan a chance for reflection in the form of flashbacks, which not only help us to understand who he is as a person, but which also offers a look at life in the USSR in the 1930s, most especially the famines that killed so many people in the Ukraine. While the journey embarked on by Giulia and Ivan is just downright brutal in so many places, this is not, as I said earlier, just another novel about an escape -- reading it that way sort of lessens the impact and importance of what the author has to say here.

recommended. ( )

Alpine Ballad is, as the title suggests, a beautiful book, uplifting and inspiring because it’s a testament to the human spirit even in times when it’s sorely tested.

Vasil Bykau (1924-2003) is well-known in Belarus and beyond for war-themed novels based on his own personal experience. This translation of Alpiyskaya Balada is the first to be published without Soviet censorship – it had apparently attracted their displeasure because there are some minor criticisms of Soviet life, though you and I in the 21st century might find it hard to see what they were upset about.

Alpine Ballad is the story of a Belarusian prisoner of the Nazis who manages to escape the camp when an allied bomb they were defusing went off. It’s towards the end of the war, and Ivan has been a prisoner for long enough to have witnessed some terrible things and to be very hungry. On the other hand, the privations he has experienced have toughened him up, which stands him in good stead for what lies ahead.

He flees into the mountains followed by an Italian girl called Guilia, also from the same POW camp. She is loud, impulsive and sunny-natured and he tries to shed her company because her erratic behaviour puts his escape at risk. As the ‘target badges’ sewn onto his clothes attest, he has escaped before, and he knows the perils and the punishment he faces if he survives and is brought back to the camp. But before long they reach an uneasy companionship and travel together.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/12/04/alpine-ballad-by-vasil-bykau-translated-by-m... ( )