In 1913, a Russian ballet incited a riot in Paris at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysés. ‘Only a Russian could do that,’ says Aleksandr Ivanovich. ‘Only a Russian could make the whole world go mad.’ A century later, in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square (Euromaidan) in Kyiv to protest then – President Yanukovych’s failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President Vladimir Putin and Russia. The peaceful protests turned violent when military police shot live ammunition into the crowd, killing over a hundred civilians. ‘I Will Die in a Foreign Land’ is a novel that follows four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are changed forever by the Euromaidan protests.

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