In Tallinn in 1946 a young boy is transfixed by the beauty of a luxurious cream-coloured car gliding down the street. It is a Russian Pobeda, a car called Victory. The sympathetic driver invites the boy for a ride and enquires about his family. Soon the boy's father disappears. Ilmar Taska's debut novel captures the distrust and fear among Estonians living under Soviet occupation after World War II. The reader is transported to a world seen through the eyes of a young boy, where it is di cult to know who is right and who is wrong, be they occupiers or occupied. Resistance ghters, exiles, informants and torturers all nd themselves living in Stalin's long shadow. Ilmar Taska is best known in his native Estonia as a lm director and producer. Pobeda 1946: A Car Called Victory is his first full novel, and is based on a prize-winning short story from 2014.

An elegant novel about the reality of an occupied country. -Sofi Oksanen

Ilmar Taska is best known in his native Estonia as a film director and producer, and for founding a national television network in Estonia, Kanal 2. Pobeda 1946: A Car Called Victory is his first full novel, and is based on a prize-winning short story from 2014. This novel, set in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and the first years of the Soviet occupation of Estonia and the Baltic countries, quickly became a best-seller, dealing with issues that are still sensitive for generations of Estonians seventy years later. It is a thrilling, fast-paced novel of suspicion, intrigue and the betrayal of trust in a burgeoning totalitarian society, and much of it is based on events in the life of the author and his family.