"No One in Heaven" is a blend of fiction and documentary. While remaining within the realm of literature, we emphasize the importance and relevance of real war history. We combined these two languages, two worlds, two halves of the book to synthesize a new way of speaking about something that is now especially difficult to express in words.
Ksenia Buksha has written 33 intertwined stories about different people, military and civilian, occupied and evacuated, men and women, children and the elderly, Soviet and German, Polish and American.
All chapters are the result of reworking numerous real memoirs and diaries of Soviet, German, and American participants and witnesses of the war. Real situations and details of life from that time cannot be invented; they can only be found. All the characters are fictional, but their voices are real.
Artur Bondar has selected 113 photographs from his vast collection. These documentary shots do not serve as illustrations, but, placed within the context of fiction, they form a parallel narrative. Some of the photographs have an author and a backstory, others are anonymous; for some, it's possible to pinpoint exactly when they were taken, while for others, we can only speculate. This is a vast body of documentary evidence that absolutely must be published—and thus the idea for a book about the war, featuring real footage, was born.