Ukraine is fashionable. Ukraine is a trend. Millions of conscious citizens talk about, support, and worry about Ukraine. The country has gone through difficult times on the path to its independence and is still fighting for it. For all those who are interested in learning more about Ukraine and its people and culture, here is a selection of books translated into English that is worth reading. Ukrainian literary tradition is a young phenomenon, but it is quite formed and original. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is the difficult Ukrainian history.
Volodymyr Rafeyenko - Mondegreen: Songs about death and love (2022)
Written in a beautiful, experimental style, the novel shows how people - and cities - are capable of radical transformation and how this, in turn, affects their interpersonal relations and cultural identification. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region, who escaped to Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war. His physical dislocation—and his subsequent willful adoption of the Ukrainian language—place the protagonist in a state of disorientation during which he is forced to challenge his convictions.
Serhiy Zhadan - The Orphanage (2021)
A devastating story of the struggles of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. When hostile soldiers invade a neighboring city, Pasha, a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian language teacher, sets out for the orphanage where his nephew Sasha lives, now in occupied territory. Venturing into combat zones, traversing shifting borders, and forging uneasy alliances along the way, Pasha realizes where his true loyalties lie in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue Sasha and bring him home.
Olesya Yaremchuk - Our others: Stories of Ukrainian Diversity (2021)
This is
an exploration of both the history and personal stories of fourteen ethnic
minority groups living within the boundaries of present-day Ukraine: Czechs and
Slovaks, Meskhetian Turks, Swedes, Romanians, Hungarians, Roma, Jews,
‘Liptaks’, Gagauzes, Germans, Vlachs, Poles, Crimean Tatars, and Armenians. The
book offers a tender―and timely―study of the little islands of cultural
diversity in Ukraine that have survived the Soviet steamroller of planned
linguistic, cultural, and religious unification and that deserve
acknowledgment in Ukraine’s broader cultural identity.
Andriy Kurkov - Grey Bees (2020)
49-year-old safety inspector-turned-beekeeper Sergey Sergeich, wants little more than to help his bees collect their pollen in peace. His simple mission on behalf of his bees leads him through some of the hottest spots of the ongoing conflict, putting him in contact with combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, and Russian occupiers, and Crimean Tatars. As spring approaches, Sergey knows he must take his bees far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets.
Artem Chekh – Absolute Zero (2020)
A first-person account of a soldier’s
journey, based on Artem Chekh’s diary that he wrote while and after his
service in the war in Donbas. One of the most important messages the book
conveys is that war means pain. Chekh is not showing the reader any heroic
combat, focusing instead on the quiet, mundane, and harsh soldier’s life. Chekh
masterfully selects the most poignant details of this kind of life.
Oksana Zabuzhko – Your ad could go there (2020)
In this breathtaking short story collection,
she turns the concept of truth over in her hands like a beautifully crafted
pair of gloves. From the triumph of the Orange Revolution, which marked the
start of the twenty-first century, to domestic victories in matchmaking,
sibling rivalry, and even tennis, Zabuzhko manages to shock the reader by
juxtaposing things as they are—inarguable, visible to the naked eye—with how
things could be, weaving myth and fairy tale into pivotal moments just as we
weave a satisfying narrative arc into our own personal mythologies.
Oleg Sentsov - Life went on anyway: Stories (2019)
Sentsov's charges seemingly stem from his opposition to Russia's invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine where he lived in Crimea. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in August 2015 on spurious terrorism charges after he was kidnapped from his house and put through a grossly unfair trial by a Russian military court, marred by allegations of torture. Many of the stories included here were read during international campaigns by PEN International, the European Film Academy, and Amnesty International, among others, to support the case for Sentsov across the world. Sentsov's final words at his trial, "Why bring up a new generation of slaves?" have become a rallying cry for his cause.
Tanja Maljartschuk - A Biography of a Chance Miracle (2018)
The book explores the life of Lena, a young girl growing up in the somewhat vapid, bureaucracy-ridden and nationalistic Western Ukrainian city of San Francisco. Lena is a misfit from early childhood due to her unwillingness to scorn everything Russian, her propensity for befriending forlorn creatures, her aversion to the status quo, and her fear of living a stupid and meaningless life. Lena sets on a mission to defend the abused and downtrodden of San Francisco armed with nothing more than an arsenal of humor, stubbornness, and no shortage of imagination. Her successes are minimal at best, but in the process of trying to save San Francisco's collective humanity, she may end up saving her own.
Serhiy Zhadan -
Mesopotamia (2014)
Serhiy Zhadan’s ode to Kharkiv, the traditionally Russian-speaking city in Eastern Ukraine where he makes his home. A leader among Ukrainian post‑independence authors, Zhadan employs both prose and poetry to address the disillusionment, complications, and complexities that have marked Ukrainian life in the decades following the Soviet Union’s collapse. His novel provides an extraordinary depiction of the lives of working-class Ukrainians struggling against an implacable fate: the road forward seems blocked at every turn by demagogic forces and remnants of the Russian past.
Andriy Kurkov - Ukraine Diaries (2014)
Kurkov's diaries begin on the first day of the pro-European protests in November 2013 and describe the violent clashes in the Maidan, the impeachment of Yanukovych, and Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the separatist uprisings in the east of Ukraine. Going beyond the headlines, they give a vivid insight into what it's like to live through - and try to make sense of - times of intense political unrest.
Serhiy Zhadan - Voroshilovgrad (2010)
A city-dwelling executive heads home to take
over his brother's gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he
finds at home are mysteries and ghosts. The bleak industrial landscape of
now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, the
Soviet-era name of the Ukrainian city of Luhansk, mixing magical realism
and exhilarating road novel in poetic, powerful, and expressive prose.
Vasyl Shkliar – Raven’s way (2009)
In 1921, after four years of war, the Bolsheviks
conquer Ukraine, but Raven and Veremii hide in the forests with other Cossacks
and continue their struggle. When Veremii dies in battle, the communists
secretly follow the burial party, but when they dig up the coffin they find a
cryptic note instead of a corpse. Vasyl Shkliar
has used authentic KGB reports to tell the story of Europe's most remarkable
resistance movement for the first time.
Oksana Zabuzhko - The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2009)
Spanning sixty tumultuous years of Ukrainian history, this multigenerational saga weaves a dramatic and intricate web of love, sex, friendship, and death. At its center: three women's secrets that refuse to remain hidden. The novel is a modern multigenerational saga that covers the years 1940 to 2004, framed as investigations by a journalist, Daryna Hoshchynska, of historical events in western Ukraine including the Holodomor, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Orange Revolution.
Maria Matios - Sweet Darusa: A Tale of two villages (2003)
A family saga that is much more dynamic than classical sagas and at the same time is much more touching and engaging. It is an emotional history of Ukraine with a very well researched and vivid historical background that gives the reader the opportunity to understand not only the characters and their drama but the entire drama of the country/countries in which they lived without leaving their village.
Yuri Andrukhovych – Recreations (1992)
A novel of carnivalesque vitality and acute social criticism. It celebrates newly found freedom and reflects upon the contradictions of post-Soviet society. Four poets and an entourage of secondary characters converge on the fictional Chortopil for the Festival of the Resurrecting Spirit, an orgy of popular culture, civic dysfunction, national pride, and sex. The novel delights the reader with its extravagant and eccentric variety.
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