Your Presence Is Mandatory
A Novel
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Your Presence Is Mandatory
Narrated by:
Sam Rushton
Buy Now for £14.92
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Narrated by:
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Sam Rushton
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By:
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Sasha Vasilyuk
Winner of the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature | Gold Medal Winner for the 94th Annual California Book Awards | Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
A riveting debut novel, based on real events, about the price of secrecy, the weight of lies, and one man's drive to protect his family from his past.
Ukraine, 2007. War veteran Yefim Shulman was beloved by his children, wife, and coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow, Nina, finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces Nina and her children to reassess the husband, father, and grandfather they thought they knew and the bonds they’d formed with him and each other.
Following one family over the course of 70 years and three generations, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light into the shadowy corners of a marriage marred by secrecy and the sacrifices people make to survive. Compassionate, gripping, and intimate, Your Presence Is Mandatory is "at once a historical epic, an engrossing family saga, and an astute examination of morality, survival, hope, and love" (Lara Prescott).
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Critic reviews
At once a historical epic, an engrossing family saga, and an astute examination of morality, survival, hope, and love, Your Presence Is Mandatory is a stunning feat.
A compelling exploration of both the distant past and more recent events . . . Vasilyuk’s engagement with uncomfortable truths is chief among many reasons I think it’s so important for my former compatriots to read her novel.
A gratifyingly specific portrait of a Jewish Ukrainian whose plight reflects that of his native country . . . Though Your Presence Is Mandatory focuses on one Ukrainian, it resonates far beyond Eastern Europe.
Meticulously researched and incredibly gripping, Your Presence Is Mandatory is historical fiction at its finest.
A Ukrainian soldier survives World War II to face a lifetime of secrets . . . Chapters set during the war alternate with chapters set much later; to begin with, Yefim, as an old man, has just died, and among his papers, his wife has found a letter to the KGB that seems to indicate that much of what he has told his family about his wartime experiences was untrue. Vasilyuk, a journalist as well as a debut novelist, sets out to comb through all this with patience, subtlety, and finesse.
Early reviewers are raving about this debut that touches on themes of guilt and betrayal, family and friendship.
Vasilyuk manages to capture both the story’s intimate drama and its epic qualities, telling the story of a double life and its reverberations across borders and generations.
Vasilyuk is an acclaimed journalist, but in this novel, she is first and foremost a sensitive, lyrical storyteller, who brings attention to the tragic history of Ukraine that began decades before the earliest events in the book and is yet unfolding. But there is more – the very nature of the story in this book calls us to engage gently and compassionately with generational trauma, rather than burying it and passing it on. Structuring the novel around a secret long buried, Vasilyuk calls us all to honesty and openness with ourselves and with our loved ones: no matter where and when we live, we desire to know those we love and be known by them.
An absorbing historical drama that spans from WWII to the current Russian-Ukraine conflict. Vasiluk is tender and caring with her characters and her setting. Fans of All The Light We Cannot See will find the perfect historical novel with this book.
This extraordinary debut is the best kind of historical fiction—an emotionally complex and heartrending saga that takes us to unfamiliar places in unfamiliar times and makes them feel known and lived.
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