In Russia, I worked as a photographer — I took part in exhibitions and created photo series exploring social issues.

But my true love for storytelling began in the Netherlands, when I started studying at the Writer's Academie (Amsterdam) and wrote a book about my grandmother, who was exiled to Siberia at the age of five.

She was the daughter of a kulak — a label that, in the 1930s under Stalin’s collectivization, meant your whole family could be deported. A five-year-old girl. A week in a teplushka — a cold, wooden cattle wagon. And then, life begins again in Siberia: among endless snow and barren steppes, without a father, without a home, without anything familiar. All of it sacrificed to a new regime.