Purge by Sofi Oksanen

Review by Sharon Samuel

Harper Paperbacks, 2010

With gripping suspense and graphic honesty, Sofi Oksanen breathes life into “a world of brittle paper [and] moldy old albums emptied of pictures,” to create a tapestry where past meets present, and the shadow of war stands starkly against the prospect of peace. In her debut novel Purge, Oksanen explores various forms of loss—loss of innocence, of freedom, of national pride, and of love—in a manner that demonstrates the depth of human resilience.

Purge centers on the elderly Aliide Truu and her charge Zara, who turns up at Aliide’s unassuming home in Estonia, bloodied and desperately seeking refuge from her former life as a sex slave. Though their paths appear to intersect coincidentally, Oksanen slowly reveals the disturbing connection between the two women through a series of flashbacks.

The novel begins in the year 1992, when Aliide and Zara engage in their cryptic dialogue and the older woman struggles to open herself up to the younger. Oksanen then abruptly introduces the Estonia of the Soviet era, during which Aliide learns to live quietly and simply under the heavy hand of the government. The reader is also transported to Zara’s past. Succumbing to the allure of earning money in Western Europe, Zara leaves her home and lands in her captors’ snare.

The suffering that both women endure may cause readers to redefine, and certainly to broaden, their perception of rape—that is, what it means to be robbed of physical and psychological purity, and to be humiliated to the point where security can only be found in distrust. Oksanen’s vivid language exposes the atrocities committed under the USSR through the lens of a feminine world altogether intimate, nurturing and tragic.

At the same time, Purge is a story about storytelling; Oksanen’s choppy format creates apprehension in the reader, as it becomes increasingly clear that there is more to Aliide and Zara than they are willing to divulge initially. By deliberately holding back key pieces of information and moving the reader in and out of layers of time, Purge is truly an adventure in itself.

Ultimately, what Oksanen has achieved is a multilayered drama about the vitality of the Estonian spirit. Certain characters seem to personify disappointment in the Allied response to their plight; and yet, despite the imminence of physical and spiritual death in post-World War II Europe, such darkness is eclipsed by the magnificence of survival.

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