Closure

"Grant realised that nightmares had tortured his father every night... It had been going on for years. After hearing his father scream that night, Avram vowed that he would find out everything that had happened to his family - and find the lost graves of those relatives who were buried in far-off lands."

In Episode Twenty Three we revisit Igor Rabiner's 'Closure' from Issue Eleven, the story of former Chelsea manager Avram Grant's emotional search for the graves of his ancestors, who died in a Russian gulag in the 1940's. A story of coincidences, aided by football, Grant visits distant, rural Russia where his father, the easy-tempered, lively, optimistic man had been forced to hand-dig the graves of his parents more than 60 years previously.

Igor Rabiner is the author of 16 books including How Spartak Has Been Killed (in Russian), winner in the Sports Investigation category at Knizhnoe Obozrenie's Sports Book Awards. His latest is SEx in Sports, examining the ups and downs of Sport-Express and sports journalism in Russia. He has been Russian Football Journalist of the Year four times.

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