I Will Die in a Foreign Land

In 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring premiered at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysées in Paris. The work so perplexed audiences that a riot broke out. “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 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 follows four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are forever changed by the Euromaidan protests. Katya is a Ukrainian-American doctor stationed at a makeshift medical clinic in St. Michael’s Monastery; Misha is an engineer originally from Pripyat, who has lived in Kyiv since his wife’s death; Slava is a fiery young activist whose past hardships steel her determination in the face of persecution; and Aleksandr Ivanovich, a former KGB agent, climbs atop a burned-out police bus at Independence Square and plays the piano.

As Katya, Misha, Slava, and Aleksandr’s lives become intertwined, they each seek their own solace during an especially tumultuous and violent period. The story is also told by a chorus of voices that incorporates folklore and narrates a turbulent Slavic history.

While unfolding an especially moving story of quiet beauty and love in a time of terror, I Will Die in a Foreign Land is an ambitious, intimate, and haunting portrait of human perseverance and empathy.

* 2022 Young Lions Fiction Award, Winner.
* A BookBrowse "20 Best Books of 2022"
* VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Longlist.
* An ABA "Indie Next List" pick for November 2021.
* "A Best Book of 2021" —New York Public Library, Cosmopolitan, Independent Book Review
* "October 2021 Must-Reads" —Debutiful, The Chicago Review of Books, The Millions

"An impressive feat of empathy... In this novel about the fight for a fatherland, the relationships between fathers and mothers and their children are spotlit in sometimes shocking ways... I Will Die in a Foreign Land is also overwhelmingly full of music: the Captain’s piano playing that sustains protesters; the bells of the monastery; and through the novel’s choral structure, a swirl of private melodies that come together in surprising harmony from start to finish. The title itself comes from a western Ukrainian song, traditionally performed by kobzari, the wandering bards “liquidated” by Stalin in 1932. Their ghosts are ever-present in this rich, multilayered story. It will resonate with a wide range of readers, and provide illuminating insight for those hoping to learn more about the current conflict."
—Jennifer Croft, The Guardian

"This novel can only be described as epic... What Pickhart reminds us is that every face in the crowd of a conflict has its own intimate story, and has its own reasons for believing what they believe. The danger we all face is forgetting that democracy is actually the agreement to peacefully disagree... I Will Die in a Foreign Land opened my heart and my mind in new ways."
—Jennifer Morrison, A3C Reads

“Political leaders often behave as if they have no idea what a human life even is, as if none of them had mothers or know the sound of a piano or remember the weight of one hand in another. Kalani Pickhart’s I Will Die in a Foreign Land is a wild and prismatic refutation of that tragedy—the ongoing disaster of greed and domination and war.”
—Catherine Lacey, Young Lions Fiction Award judge, and author of Pew, The Answers, and Nobody Is Ever Missing, in Lit Hub

"Kalani Pickhart's timely debut novel, I Will Die In a Foreign Land, is about the 2014 Ukrainian revolution which provided a pretense for Russia to annex Crimea. The story follows the experiences of several characters whose lives intersect as the country's political situation deteriorates. There's a Ukrainian-American doctor, an old KGB spy, a former mine worker, and others, and these episodes are interspersed with folk songs, news reports and historical notes. The effect—kaleidoscopic but never confusing—provides an intimate sense of a country convulsing, mourning, and somehow surviving."
—CBS News, "The Book Report: Recommendations from Washington Post critic Ron Charles"

"I tore through I Will Die in a Foreign Land. It’s terrific. I’ve been following the alarming news about Putin’s machinations along the Ukrainian border, but nothing has given me such a profound impression of what Ukrainians have endured as this intensely moving novel."
—Ron Charles, Washington Post

Kalani Pickhart is the author of I Will Die in a Foreign Land, winner of the 2022 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and long-listed for the 2022 Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. Her short fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Kalani has been the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence for Eastern European and Eurasian Studies. She currently lives and writes in Phoenix, Arizona.