TRAGEDY OF THE HUNGER

The year is 1946. It's winter. Desolation, hunger and atrocity have fallen upon those who are left behind – mostly women and children. In East Prussia, the German civilians have become the target of hate and cruelty of the stationed armies of the war-winning nations.

Among many such families with no fathers or husbands left to support, the story takes us close to the family of Eva, Lotte and Martha, who have taken refuge in a woodshed close to their old home which has already been seized. While mothers collect the leftover scraps of food and potato peels, or whatever they can find, children collect the firewood. However, both jobs are not easy; they have to deceive, run and hide amid the war torn town from the victorious army. Inside the shelter, it is cold and hunger that torments them, and outside they have to run for their lives.

here are women digging trenches, dying from hunger and fatigue;

here are children setting off shells left behind by the war;

here are wolves that have grown accustomed to eating human flesh;

here is a dog with a blackened human hand in its teeth;

here are the eyes of the starving, here is famine, famine and famine;

here are corpses – death and corpses;

here are the new arrivals, colonists, destroying everything that has survived – churches, castles, cemeteries, drainage systems, animal pens;

here are the empty and desolate fields, in which even the wind loses its way, not finding a single familiar path among the ruins and barren wastes;

here is postwar Prussia, trampled underfoot, raped, stood against a wall and shot.

Soon in the story, Heinz, the eldest son of Eva, who has just returned from Lithuania, and Albert, son of Martha take on a journey to Lithuania to find work and bring food for their families. The family slowly disintegrates, losing members one after the other – Monika, Brigitte and Renate, all leave or are separated from their family and take journey into the unwelcoming world ruled with hatred over love. Such children populated the area during the war, who would thieve, beg, sell themselves, sold by others, even by their parents, would cross the border, were killed in the attempt… – they were called the 'wolf children.'

A large group of people with their hands down by their sides, feet dragging along the road that led past the yard, moving in step, slowly, impelling itself forward from one edge of the mist to the other. To where? Who knows… They looked like they had died a long time ago. Heinz was frightened that the death mask was right – he had died a long time ago, as had these skeletons passing by.

The novel is cinematic. The power of the images and scenes transports us to the heart of the post war Prussia. A corpse frozen by the side of the road; swirling snow and darkness that gives a grey and gloomy tone to the story and the hardship of the characters; a man hanging from the branch of a tree; the life in a decay; animal struggling with hunger; the emptiness, void and the cold that takes place of the soul of the living, who are confused whether to keep hold of the hope or die like so many before during the war; frozen earth where families cannot dig deep graves for the dead ones; wolves feeding on the frozen corpses; when life becomes so unbearable that you wish your child were dead or you yourself were dead… the passages, dialogues and the drama will make you stop reading time and again, and reflect the hunting sharp images of the war, people and their cries.

‘We found a murdered woman in a farmhouse. She was naked and they’d sliced open her belly, a tiny baby had fallen out of her belly, it was in a sack like the egg, the sack was split. I suppose the baby had tried to come out, but had frozen. They were both like pieces of ice, the woman and the child.’

In the Shadow of Wolves is a tragic account of women and children left behind the war. Adults are recruited in the war and they die, but what becomes of the young ones? They try to adapt and survive, run and hide, eat and sleep. The common necessity of human beings drive them to take horrific measures in the struggle to survive. Such were the fate of those 'wolf children' who wanted to live. The novel is one of the best war novels written that has captured the fate of the fateless, horrors in the hope of being alive and especially the struggle of children for whom live became harsh before they were even grownups. There is nothing more tragic when a child has to live like an adult!

Author: Alvydas Šlepikas
Original Text: Lithuanian
Translator: Romas Kinka
Publisher: One World Publications https://oneworld-publications.com/subject-fiction/translated-fiction/

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher