Hold your tongue, by Polina Panassenko: born in the USSR

Some stories come at just the right time. This is the first novel by Polina Panassenko to remind us that Russia is not reduced to the warrior Cheese fries. That it has a soul and that this soul moves. Knitting back and forth between theUSSR become Russia, country of her childhood and France where she has lived since the age of kindergarten, the text of Polina Panassenko owes its genesis to the efforts she undertakes with the French justice system to recover her original first name, Polina , swapped in France for that of Pauline. Francization granted by the French State at the request of her father to facilitate the integration of his daughter in their adoptive country.

Alternately whimsical, nostalgic or overwhelming, the novel therefore begins at the time of theUSSR seen at child’s height. The communal apartment, life with the adored grandparents, the summer transhumance at the dacha, the potato field to hoe, the wood stove that you have to run to get hot water, the…