The Polish translation of the book With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows (W butach do tańca przez syberyjskie śniegi ) was published in May 2015 in cooperation with Znak, a publishing house. With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows, written by Sandra Kalniete, a Latvian politician and diplomat, is a memoir of the author’s family banishment from Latvia to Siberia.
Sandra Kalniete was born in Siberia, where her parents had been expulsed. When she was 5, the family finally could return to Latvia. The family history remained unknown, no questions were ever asked. Only in the 1980s Kalniete started her journey into the past, searching for the truth hidden under the fear, trauma and Soviet propaganda.
The book is not a simple family memoir, but it also tells the story of Latvia’s 20th-century history determined by a nation’s struggles with the twin plagues infecting Central and Eastern Europe: communism and Nazism. A personal narrative draws complicated family relations, everyday lives of the deportees on the canvas of war, terror, Gulag, tortures. It is a story of the extreme humiliation of man, but also a proof that the will to live and the desire to preserve human dignity manifest themselves in all conditions.
Sandra Kalniete is also a member of ENRS Advisory Board. The book was a best-seller in Latvia and has been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Arabic.