Novel set in a war-torn Ukraine wins Sami Rohr prize for Jewish literature
“Your Presence Is Mandatory” by Sasha Vasilyuk is based on a family secret harbored by the author’s grandfather
Sasha Vasilyuk’s debut novel, “Your Presence Is Mandatory,” is about a Ukrainian Jewish World War II veteran with a terrible secret. (Bloomsbury)
By Andrew Silow-Carroll May 21, 2025
(JTA) —
A debut novel about a Ukrainian Jewish World War II veteran, and family secrets unveiled against the backdrop of the 2014 Russian-Ukrainian war, has won the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
“Your Presence Is Mandatory” by Sasha Vasilyuk is the second book by an immigrant from the former Soviet Union to win the annual prize, which was established in 2007 and alternates between awarding works of fiction and nonfiction. Honoring emerging writers, the prize comes with a $100,000 award.
“Sasha Vasilyuk’s remarkable achievement lies in her ability to weave the personal and historical into a narrative that speaks across generations,” said Debra Goldberg, director of the Sami Rohr Prize, in a statement Tuesday announcing the winner.
Vasilyuk emigrated to San Francisco from Moscow as a teenager in 1996, while most of her extended family remained in Russia and Ukraine. “Your Presence Is Mandatory” was inspired by her own grandfather, Yefim.
Although Vasilyuk has written articles critical of Russia’s current war on Ukraine, she chose to set the novel in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists incited a coup in her family’s hometown in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
“After seeing how war and propaganda go together, I felt compelled to write a novel that weaves the two wars together through one family’s story,” she told Esquire last year. “I wanted to resurrect the silenced past of my grandparents to contest this new, aggressive reappropriation of history.”
Vasilyuk joins a lengthy list of prize-winning authors who came of age after leaving the Soviet Union as part of the Jewish exodus, mostly in the 1980s and ‘90s. They include Anya Ulinich, David Bezmozgis, Gary Shteyngart, Irina Reyn, Boris Fishman, Ruth Madievsky and Sana Krasikov, whose debut short story collection, “One More Year,” won the Sami Rohr Prize in 2009.
“Your Presence Is Mandatory” beat three other finalists: “Fervor” by Toby Lloyd, about a family of devout Jews living in North London; “Our Little Histories” by Janice Weizman, a multigenerational family saga written as a series of linked stories; and “Next Stop” by Benjamin Resnick, a debut novel set in a near future during which a cosmic cataclysm in Israel and beyond leaves a Diaspora Jewish family vulnerable to persecution.
The Rohr prize, named for a late German-born American real estate developer and philanthropist, is administered in association with the National Library of Israel. 70 Faces Media, the parent company of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is the prize’s media partner.
