Krambambuli

By Syr Ruus

Krambambuli is a memoir of the author’s childhood experiences during and subsequent to World War II. She documents three stages of displacement due to war: escaping destruction in Estonia, living as a refugee in Germany and Austria, and beginning a new life as an immigrant first in the United States, and later in Canada. Krambambuli is not meant to be a historical account. Rather, it offers a child’s perspective of the situations and people making up her early existence: her handsome and charming father, Isa, who sweeps into her life at intervals but provides no financial support; her disciplinarian mother, Ema, an optimist and extremely competent survivor who uses her creativity to make even a small rudimentary space attractive and homey; the hated Onu Gusti; and the many others who pass through this transitory time dominated by war. The book is a moving account of child’s experience in a camp for displaced persons and of growing up as a displaced child and daughter of a single mother in America. Totsu, the child, is terrorized by the war and the disruption and fears losing her mother’s love to a male lover and the possibility of being displaced by a half-sibling. She endures multiple new school and language situations and the added angst that being a displaced person can add to the life of a teenager. With such different personalities, she and her mother live their lives in both conflict, and in the knowledge that they are all each other has.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inanna Publications
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781771335768

Syr Ruus

Syr Ruus was born in Estonia at the start of the Second World War. As a small child, she escaped with her mother to Germany. After the war ended they lived in various DP camps before immigrating to the United States where she grew up and received her education. In 1970, she moved to Nova Scotia, working as a teacher while raising her three children. She has written a prize-winning juvenile novel and published short fiction in anthologies and journals. Lovesongs of Emmanuel Taggart is the recipient of the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize from the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia.

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