SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Artem is 12 and likes to spend summer days on his grandfather's sunflower farm, swimming with his younger brother, Yuri, and sketching in a book his father has sent him from America. But on a February night in 2022, they hear a wail of sirens and bomb blasts. And after a night in a basement, they risk taking 10 minutes to pack up what they can into backpacks and flee for their lives.
SAM WACHMAN: (Reading) My reusable water bottle and Yuri's reusable water bottle, which has a Minecraft sticker on the bottom to distinguish it from mine, Yuri's stuffed crocodile Arkady, the framed photo of me and Tato on top of Javierla (ph), my phone, our headphones, my sketchbook. I go to the bathroom to collect our toothbrushes and toothpaste. Our three toothbrushes sit together in a cup - Mom's pink electric one, Yuri's red one, my blue one, evidence that all three of us are here. In the mirror, I see that my shirt is on inside out. I start to take it off, and there's another explosion. Mama shouts my name, Yuri's name. My reflection jumps, then splits down the middle, right across my neck, as the mirror cracks in half.
SIMON: "The Sunflower Boys" is the first novel from Sam Wachman, who's from a Ukrainian family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and taught English in a small primary school in Ukraine. He joins us now from our member station WBUR. Thanks so much for being with us.
WACHMAN: Thank you so much for having me. It's an immense honor.
SIMON: I gather this novel, in many ways, begins with a story told to you by a young boy.
WACHMAN: It very much does, yes. This was about a year into the war, and I was volunteering at a camp for Ukrainian kids just over the border in Romania. I used to tutor English in Ukraine. And all of the kids that I tutored somehow made it to this camp in Romania, and I hadn't seen them in at least two years. So we were sitting around, way past their bedtimes, way past my bedtime, exchanging stories of the war. And I made an offhand comment like, you guys need to write a book. And one of my kids, who was 13 at the time, said, we're busy. You do it.
SIMON: Artem and Yuri, his brother, have to flee. Where do they think they're going?
WACHMAN: Toward their father. They think that they're going toward their father when they flee, but I think that they are also thinking in a sort of a fight-or-flight state. I'm not sure that they're thinking more than one or two steps ahead of where they currently are. The shock of the first weeks of the war induced a lot of panic in a lot of people. And their goal was just sort of to make their way west because west is away from Russia. And even though it's obviously a very long way from where they live in the central part of Ukraine, they're still trying to make their way west.
SIMON: When your novel opens, you get the impression that young Ukrainians didn't know a lot about Ukraine's history, particularly under Joseph Stalin.
WACHMAN: Artem was very, very young in this story. I mean, the oldest that he becomes is - in this book is 13. And I think that young people around the world are often not particularly familiar with their own national history.
SIMON: Not just 12-year-olds - astonishing number of Americans don't know their history.
WACHMAN: I don't. I've done those tests online where it's like, can you pass the American citizenship exam? And I fail every time. But I in particular did want to capture some of the amnesia that comes with the generation of Ukrainians born long after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., born into a very young nation that is trying to find its place in the world geopolitically. So that was a part of it.
SIMON: And when the war strikes, Artem is also trying to come to terms with something else in his life, isn't he?
WACHMAN: Yes. He's grappling with his nascent feelings for his best friend, Viktor. He is trying to come to terms with his sexuality, his attraction to another boy in a country that has not always received that in a particularly kind or understanding way. And he's trying to discover himself with very few role models and very few people to talk to, especially very few male role models. His father is kind of scarce.
SIMON: You have a phrase that I marked down. Their father - you're right. His absence sits on our couch.
WACHMAN: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I - occasionally, I hear these phrases, and I go, oh, that's good. Who wrote that?
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: It's a good one, yeah. His father sends him sketchbooks. What does drawing put into Artem's life?
WACHMAN: Well, drawing gives Artem a creative outlet and a way to express himself and to process things. It occupies the same place in Artem's life that writing occupies in my life. That's why I wrote him that way. And so drawing is a way - not just a distraction and an art to hone. But also, it's a way for him to process what's going on around him, which is often distressing and confusing and traumatic.
SIMON: You're struck several times in the novel by the fact that Artem is trying to stay alive. He's trying to survive. He's trying to keep his brother alive. They're both trying to find their father. And of course, he's suffered great loss, and he is just 12 years old.
WACHMAN: Yes. The resilience and the drive to keep moving forward that I personally observed among not only the Ukrainian kids who I taught, but also among other young people from Ukraine who I have known and befriended and worked with, has - it's just truly stunning, and I think that it is really a testament. And something that I wanted to convey in this book was the drive not only to survive, but also to protect. Artem's main goal in all of this is to keep his little brother, Yuri, safe.
SIMON: I know it's fiction and you're a literary figure, but do you feel a sense of mission?
WACHMAN: Absolutely. I started writing the book long before the war. This book started out as sort of a love letter from diaspora to ancestral homeland. I wanted to show the English-speaking world Ukraine. It's a country that's very close to my heart, both ancestrally and also in terms of modern Ukraine. And then when the full-scale invasion began, I sort of put the novel on hold for about a year. Writing felt like a frivolous thing to be doing with my time. And I was volunteering as a translator and volunteering with refugee families. And eventually, I got back to writing the book, largely because of my students.
And I do still feel a great sense of mission toward bringing Ukraine, both in its peaceful form and in its current state, into one book. So I suppose that my sense of mission is that I want to convey what has been lost and what still must be salvaged. And, you know, most of all, I'm always trying to write toward peace. I think good literature should always tap into the shared undercurrent of human experience. Good literature should always be antithetical to violence. So I believe in literature as a force for peace and solidarity, and I'm trying to write toward that.
SIMON: "The Sunflower Boys" is the first novel from Sam Wachman. Thank you so much for being with us.
WACHMAN: Thank you so much for having me.
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