We Were Not Like Other People [Library Binding]

Ephraim Sevela (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1989

Separated from his family when the Germans invade Russia during World War II, a young boy learns to fend for himself and earn a living whenever and however he can.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The fearsomeness of war is fully realized in this intensely moving novel of the World War II experiences of a Soviet boy. The nameless Jewish narrator's secure life is shattered at age nine, when his cavalry officer father is taken away during Stalin's purges of 1937. Years of nightmarish wandering follow, first with his mother and sister and then alone. He is nursed from a serious illness by his old geography teacher and his wife, only to witness the latter's subsequent death. More almost unimaginable privation follows: internment at a vocational "school" where starved orphans fall into death-dealing machines; a frozen ride through the steppes in an empty coal car. A stint as a farm laborer in Siberia brings material--if not emotional--relief. The now-teenaged narrator then goes off to the German front as a colonel's would-be adoptive son, only to be orphaned afresh at war's end. The protagonist makes his way to his grandfather's homestead, where, against all odds, his whole family eventually reunites. Sevela's ( Why There Is No Heaven on Earth ) fresh prose is so heartfelt and immediate, it almost seems not to be in translation. The book's somber subject is best appreciated by mature young adults. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up-- This richly detailed and episodic novel, based on the Russian Jewish immigrant author's own experience in World War II USSR, portrays a teenage boy who becomes separated from his family. (His father had recently been exiled to Siberia during the Stalinist purges). After many brushes with danger, the boy is found--half-dead from hunger and exhaustion--by a Russian peasant woman and her many daughters, who nurse him back to health and take him in as one of their own. In this encounter as well as in a successive one with Samokhin, a Russian Army comrade and friend, the novel's young narrator/hero becomes ennobled by his contact with these stereotypical peasant saints whose honesty, caring, selflessness, and generosity are an integral part of Soviet social mythology. The peasant woman and Samokhin are the two reasons the boy lives through the gruesome war, enabling him to return home after the war and miraculously reunite with his mother, sister, and aunt. Three weeks later, his father returns home. As in Sevela's Why There Is No Heaven on Earth (Harper, 1982) , the author reveals a deep-rooted ambivalence toward his Jewishness against the backdrop of his black-and-white world of Soviets, on the one hand, and everyone else on the other--a strange world view for an author who has been classed as a Refusnik. Young readers may relate to the story's young hero's very real predicaments, but they will also be exposed to a difficult-to-believe version of what happened in the Soviet Union during World War II. --Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Library Binding: 216 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins (October 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060255080
• ISBN-13: 978-0060255084
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,723,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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