Abacus seizes 'sweeping' novel by Wall Street Journal chief foreign-affairs correspondent Trofimov

Abacus has seized Yaroslav Trofimov’s "sweeping, stunningly ambitious" debut novel, No Country for Love.

Publisher Clare Smith acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in a pre-empt from Caspian Dennis, on behalf of Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents, for publication in July 2024. French, Dutch and Italian rights have also been sold.

The synopsis says: "Seventeen-year-old Deborah Rosenbaum, ambitious and in love with literature, arrives in the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kharkiv, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; 1930 is a new dawn, the Soviet era, where skyscrapers go up overnight.

"Deborah finds work and meets a dashing young officer named Samuel who is training to become a fighter pilot. They fall in love and begin to become part of Ukraine’s new cultural elite. But Deborah’s prospects -- and Ukraine’s – soon dim… No Country for Love follows the hard choices Debora makes as Ukraine, caught between two totalitarian ideologies, turns into the deadliest place in the world, and she has to protect those she loves most." 

Smith said: "No Country for Love is the most absorbing, emotional read, with characters who draw you into their lives, the threats they face and their struggles for freedom and love. I am delighted Abacus will be publishing in July 2024."

Trofimov is chief foreign-affairs correspondent at the Wall Street Journal. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2022 and in 2023, he is also the author of three books of narrative non-fiction including Our Enemies Will Vanish (Penguin Press), a first-hand account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that will publish in January 2024.