Boffins Books and Subiaco Library are pleased to host Eugene Schlusser for the launch of his new book Escape from the Sun: Surviving the Tyrannies of Lenin Hitler & Stalin.
Join us with special guest Diana Warnock for an in conversation event about this extraordinary biopic tale about how a son retrieved his past to safeguard the future.
Copies of Escape from the Sun will be available for sale on the night.
Can't make it? We'll happily have a copy of Escape from the Sun signed for you. Simply contact us via phone, email, online or visit us in-store, and we'll take care of the rest.
The author tracks the lives of Paul and Natalie, his parents, as they navigate their way through three repressive regimes.
Both born in Russia in 1900, they live through World War 1, revolution, famine and civil war. In the early 1920s Paul comes under suspicion and when his cousin is arrested for spying for Germany he has to flee. He takes his bride, Natalie, a medical doctor, to Berlin expecting to stay a year. From then on they are in constant danger of the Soviet Secret Service. Their lives remain threatened, and a closed book until the fall of the Soviet Union. A son asks whether he should be glad or sad that the truth of this Russian love story had been kept from him?”
Eugene Schlusser arrived on the shores of Fremantle in November 1950 with his mother Natalie and three siblings. Tragically his father Paul died before reaching Australia. The reason why are traced in his book, Escape from the Sun. The family was taken to the Army Camp in Northam. He went to High School in Northam and then relocated to Perth, first to Colin Street, West Perth where his mother ran a ‘Mixed Business’ (the site is now part of the widened Loftus street) and then Jersey Street, Subiaco,(now a petrol station). He attended UWA completing a BA (Hons).
Eugene produced programmes for ABCTV, Crawford Productions before creating his own production company. His broadcast documentaries include films on the Australian artists Rupert Bunny, William Dobell, Hans Heysen and Nora Heysen. As an actor he appeared in “Prisoner”, “Skyways”, “Anna Karenina”. He directed the feature film “A Sting in the Tale”.