"An erudite, sensitive, deeply scholarly analysis of Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar, Russian, and Turkish poetry, prose, and films that expose Stalin’s annihilation of Crimean Tatars. Finnin’s work is both welcome and timely in view of the atrocities Russia is currently inflicting on Ukraine, atrocities born of Putin's false historical perceptions and imperialistic longings. Including detailed notes and a coda, this captivating, informative, compelling work elucidates the many nuances of the current situation in Ukraine for the benefit of those who would like to comprehend the incomprehensible."
D. Hutchins, CHOICE
"Finnin scrutinizes how collective guilt over the deportation of the Crimean Tatars was processed or denied in Crimean Tatar, Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish literature, in particular poetic literature and cinema. … [T]he book ought to be on the reading list of all experts and students of Soviet and post-Soviet studies, as well as general readership, since it is a feast of comparative literature in the Black Sea region, beautifully written with great empathy for the suffering of indigenous peoples there."
Filiz Tutku Aydın, University of Ankara, Europe-Asia Studies
“The book rightfully deserves to be celebrated for author’s efforts to bring together literary exchanges in four languages, for pioneering the deep intertextual analysis of the Crimean Tatar literature, for illuminating previously obscured intercultural relations, and above all, for giving justice to centuries of Crimea’s colonial condition.… [T]he book should be read by everyone who is not indifferent to the plight of others – academics and nonacademics alike.”
Mariia Shynkarenko, Nationalities Papers
"Finnin’s research is on the cutting edge of Crimean studies… and offers a new way to examine Crimean national identity. Blood of Others is a fine example of comparative literary research and a valuable contribution to the field of human rights discourse."
Katya Jordan, Modern Language Review
“In Blood of Others Rory Finnin has given us a book that tells us much that we should have known long ago, but did not... [It is] a book that honours the courage of righteous speech and behaviour, calls perfidy and injustice by their proper names and thereby becomes a powerful moral statement itself. And it is a book whose eloquence is commensurate with its high purpose.”
Marko Pavlyshyn, Slavonic and East European Review
“This is interdisciplinary humanities at its best, speaking to social scientist and humanist alike… Against the ongoing trauma of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea, Blood of Others is a most timely read, as intellectually stimulating and archivally rich as it is ethically fortifying.”
Edyta M. Bojanowska, Slavic Review
"In his introduction to Blood of Others, Rory Finnin writes that he aims to ‘realign our intellectual horizons,’ to refocus our attention on the cultural crossroads that is the Black Sea. He succeeds: using Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar, and Turkish sources, and with the tragic history of the Crimean Tatars as his focus, he shows how writers in the region influenced and enhanced one another's work. A brilliant book by the UK’s most important scholar of Ukraine."
Anne Applebaum, Staff Writer, The Atlantic, Senior Fellow, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History and Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
"Rory Finnin has written the definitive account of cultural responses to a still-hidden atrocity: the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Through new research and sensitive interpretations, Blood of Others shows how the Crimean Tatar experience is deeply connected to global themes of colonialism, dispossession, and survival. It is a record of cultural resilience against astounding odds and a detailed portrait of art and memory in action."
Charles King, Professor of International Affairs and Government, Georgetown University and author of The Black Sea: A History
"Blood of Others is an astonishing account of the entanglement of Russian, Crimean Tatar, Turkish, and Ukrainian cultural life with the political and social history of the Crimean Tatars. Rory Finnin’s work is an impressive navigation among the languages and religious confessions of the Black Sea region, cultural works from poetry to film, centuries of imperial domination, and methodological toolkits, revealing the historical effects and ethical burdens of cultural expression in a fraught, multiply colonized territory."
Kevin M.F. Platt, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania and editor of Global Russian Cultures
"In this thoughtful, nuanced study of the literature of Crimea, Rory Finnin exposes the seams connecting the nations and empires that have coexisted in the Black Sea. Blood of Others corrects a significant lacuna in English language scholarship on Eurasian history and literature."
Amelia Glaser, Associate Professor of Literature and Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies, University of California San Diego and author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia's Literary Borderlands: From the Shtetl Fair to the Petersburg Bookshop
"The deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland in 1944 was not only one of the crimes of Stalinism. It was also a triumph of settler colonialism that opened the door to the Russian annexation of the Crimea in 2014. In Blood of Others Rory Finnin shows the power of literary texts to forge ties of solidarity with an oppressed people across national, ethnic, and linguistic lines, ties of solidarity that would not exist otherwise. It is a book about the tragedy of the past that inspires optimism about the future, and an essential read for anyone interested in the literature, history, and politics of the Black Sea region."
Serhii Plokhy, Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University and author of The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present
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