Books from Ukraine

"Forget politics, don't read newspapers, don't go online, refuse to vote" - so begins "Left March," a chapter from Serhij...

"Forget politics, don't read newspapers, don't go online, refuse to vote" - so begins "Left March," a chapter from Serhij Zhadan's second volume of prose, which bases its motto on the  Sex Pistols’ song, Anarchy in the UK. Zhadan is currently emerging as the strongest voice in young Ukrainian literature – and a polar opposite to Yuri Andrukhovych. Zhadan's first-person narrator is constantly on a train or travelling through bizarre landscapes. But it is not the ruins of the Habsburg past he’s seeking, but the industrial wastelands of the Donbass in the south-east of the country – the sites of anarcho-communism smashed by the Soviets. No one seems to remember Nestor Machno; there never was any Anarchism. Until it is resurrected in November 2004 in Kharkiv, at the foot of the "Fuck Lenin Monument".

A novel about the forgotten Ukrainian folk hero Vyacheslav Lypynskyi, whose life is artfully intertwined with that of the first-person...

A novel about the forgotten Ukrainian folk hero Vyacheslav Lypynskyi, whose life is artfully intertwined with that of the first-person narrator. The latter searches for clues in Lypynskyi’s past to help her cope better with her own present. An impressively literary novel that shows what it means if a person’s identity consists of fear, obedience and forgetting.

A picture catches the viewer's eye and doesn't let go. The photo of a ghostly plant in a book about...

A picture catches the viewer's eye and doesn't let go. The photo of a ghostly plant in a book about Chernobyl. The smoke-fogged face of a miner in a Kiev exhibition. Or a Syrian refugee couple landing on Lesbos, printed in the New York Times. What is it that makes up the present? Items hanging in exhibitions, weathering on billboards, or running across our screens? How is it possible to transform intimate moments of dismay or astonishment into language? With the photo columns that she began writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in 2015, the author created her own genre: short prose, condensing landscape, biography, contemporary history and form into a minimal space. It is precisely because Katya Petrowskaya takes everything personally, be it the photo of an old woman carried skywards in a chairlift in the Caucasus, or the sight of a wall in Brussels after the terrorist attacks, that her texts attain the power to distil truth from a fleeting moment.

For Yuri Andrukhovych, internationally the best known of Ukrainian authors, the limited knowledge of Ukraine among his readership in Western...

For Yuri Andrukhovych, internationally the best known of Ukrainian authors, the limited knowledge of Ukraine among his readership in Western Europe and the United States is a serious matter, so in this series of brilliant essays he familiarises them with the region. He describes the post-Soviet reality of his country in a refreshing tone, with colourful details and rich in irony: Lviv and Kyiv, traces of the vanished Galicia and the disaster at Chernobyl, the westward exodus of the population, and the government’s repressive media policy, but also the strange existence of artists, writers and intellectuals living in a ”country that people leave".

In a house in the centre of Lviv live four women who love each other and hate each other in...

In a house in the centre of Lviv live four women who love each other and hate each other in equal measure. They share a desire for freedom as well as rebelliousness – and they share their misfortune in love. Until the day that changes everything: Marianna is shot dead in the street. From the window, her daughter watches as the funeral procession turns into a demonstration. Marianna was not just a celebrated singer, but also an activist in the fight for an independent Ukraine. Years later, beneath the same window stands a man who brings Marianna's daughter closer to her hometown, and to her mother, who died far too young. Against the backdrop of Lviv's turbulent history, Żanna Słoniowska tells of mothers and daughters, of private and social revolts, and the unconditional belief in freedom, emancipation and love.

In 2014, supported by local fighters, the Russian army occupied parts of Ukraine's two easternmost regions, Donetsk and Luhansk. During...

In 2014, supported by local fighters, the Russian army occupied parts of Ukraine's two easternmost regions, Donetsk and Luhansk. During the Soviet era, these were considered the vibrant industrial heart of the socialist utopia. At the end of 2016, Oleksandr Mykhed embarked on a research trip through eastern Ukraine to answer the most pressing questions of those who have never seen the region with their own eyes. His book lets you take part in that journey and provides insights into the Ukrainian east. Mykhed recounts conversations with locals and celebrities, such as writer Serhij Zhadan and historian Ihor Koslowskyj, who spent 700 days in Russian captivity. We learn about the miners, about the Belgian and British investors who founded the eastern cities, and about the curse and blessing of coal. In its original edition, this book became a bestseller in Ukraine and won several awards; it was longlisted for the BBC Book Award and the Nonfiction Book Award.

Archduke Wilhelm suffers from arachnophobia and a fear of needles; he loves tattoos and men. He is passionately committed to...

Archduke Wilhelm suffers from arachnophobia and a fear of needles; he loves tattoos and men. He is passionately committed to the Ukrainians’ aspirations to independence – but the October Revolution ruins his plans to become King of Ukraine. There follow years in hiding as a spy, who gets his rich relations to fund his dissolute life in seedy Paris. According to the history books, Wilhelm's life ended in 1948, but Natalka Sniadanko resurrects him and lets him become a legend of L’viv’s black market!

The life of his granddaughter, Halyna, is likewise marked by upheaval. How does she find her own way, as a woman and as a Ukrainian of a new generation?

Just over a month after the terror attack at the Bataclan on 13 November 2015, Oksana Zabuzhko visited Paris. Her...

Just over a month after the terror attack at the Bataclan on 13 November 2015, Oksana Zabuzhko visited Paris. Her experience in the paralysed metropolis prompted the Ukrainian author to reflect on the process of dealing with the fear caused by war and terror. In her essay, she first examines the historical and cultural memory of European states. Starting with the collaborators under the Vichy regime and the failure of left-wing intellectuals during the Second World War, Zabuzhko traverses French intellectual history from Sartre to Derrida to Houellebecq. Where are the parallels between the Nazi invasion of France and the Russian occupation of Crimea since 2014? Is Ukraine a failed state? What influence do politics and the media have on our everyday lives? Referring to the field studies, in a further step she explores the question of how far sex is a metaphor for social and cultural constellations.

The lovers of justice comprise crimes and criminals, both real and alleged: Bohdan Staschynskyj, for example, a KGB agent and...

The lovers of justice comprise crimes and criminals, both real and alleged: Bohdan Staschynskyj, for example, a KGB agent and contract killer who murders the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera in his Munich exile but then, because in love with an East German hairdresser, he flees with her to the West and turns himself in. Or Mario, the colonial goods merchant from Kolomea in the eastern hinterland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: He is young, successful and devoted to his wife Maria in a beautiful, wild love – but his secret encounter with a Molfar diviner in the Carpathians will prove so fatal that not even Emperor Franz Joseph himself will be able to help him.

Filled with expectations and great ambitions, Stepan arrives in the metropolis of Kyiv, where he wants to start studying and...

Filled with expectations and great ambitions, Stepan arrives in the metropolis of Kyiv, where he wants to start studying and help build socialism. The city and its inhabitants fascinate him, but they also repel him and fail to meet his exaggerated demands. Above all, however, they plunge him into chaos and scupper his noble plans: when Stepan also becomes passionate about writing, his is finally derailed from his course.

"I'm going to the Maidan. Who’s coming with me?" wrote Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Najem on Facebook in November 2013. What...

"I'm going to the Maidan. Who’s coming with me?" wrote Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Najem on Facebook in November 2013. What began as a local demonstration against the autocratic decision by President Viktor Yanukovych not to sign the Association Agreement with the EU became a nationwide protest movement: the Euromaidan. More than a hundred people were killed when the peaceful protest turned violent.

They have names like Svetlana, Lena or Xenia. They work in a nail salon, chat in a café or prepare...

They have names like Svetlana, Lena or Xenia. They work in a nail salon, chat in a café or prepare the revolution. In the cities as in the countryside, Beloruset's Ukrainian protagonists go about their lives. Only rarely and secretively do they enter the outer edges of the field of vision filled by everyday life – the vigilantes, the soldiers, the blood.

A village near Donetsk, near the front line between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists. The war has been...

A village near Donetsk, near the front line between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists. The war has been raging for three years and the local people have left the village. Only the beekeeper Sergey chose to stay – because if everyone leaves, no one will return. Apart from him, there is just his "childhood enemy" Pashka. Their hardship now brings them together. In the third spring, Sergey decides to take his bees away from the war zone. They need to fly out in peace to gather their nectar. On his journey Sergey makes friends, but he also encounters mistrust and resentment. Even in the paradise of Crimea he does not really feel welcome. And when even his bees seem to start changing, he decides to return to his village.

The Ukrainian film director and Maidan-activist, Oleg Senzov, spent 145 days on a hunger strike, during which time he kept...

The Ukrainian film director and Maidan-activist, Oleg Senzov, spent 145 days on a hunger strike, during which time he kept diaries and wrote short stories, His writing provides insights into everyday life in the Russian penal colony "Polar Bear", in Labytnangi Arctic Circle, where he was forced to serve his sentence up to his early release. Senzov describes the physical changes he experiences while declining the intake of food, the capricious weather in this inhospitable region, the things he reads, and his memories of the revolution on the Maidan in the winter of 2013-14, in which he was directly involved. He portrays fellow prisoners and sheds light on the mechanisms of a brutal and inhumane legal and detention system, in which the camp doctor is the only person Senzow can trust for support.

In 2017, Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev was arrested in occupied Donetsk and sentenced to 15 years in prison for "extremism"...

In 2017, Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev was arrested in occupied Donetsk and sentenced to 15 years in prison for "extremism" and "espionage". Among other things, this was because he had put the words "Donetsk People's Republic" in quotation marks in his reports from the war zone. He spent two and a half years in detention, most of it in the so-called "Isolation", a Donetsk torture prison with the address Light Path 3. To be able to survive in the hell that was the camp, Aseyev would write whenever he could: on scraps of cardboard and paper. His mission is to survive, to be able to report. Stanislav Aseyev has worked since 2020 at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF) in Kyiv as an expert on the occupied territories of the Donbass.

A Ukrainian, a German, a Pole, a Jew. The four young friends are at home in the multicultural Lviv of...

A Ukrainian, a German, a Pole, a Jew. The four young friends are at home in the multicultural Lviv of the 1930s. It is a colourful place replete with magically bizarre characters – from the grandmother, passionate about her work as a professional mourner, to the ancient librarian who cannot die till her fiancé returns from the mysterious depths of the bookshelves. With the arrival of the Soviets and later the Nazis, the city becomes a sombre place. In the turmoil of war, a fateful melody leaves behind traces that lead up to the present day: the Tango of Death. In a mysterious way, it reawakens memories of an earlier life, making it possible for loved ones to find each other again – there, where the poppy dances. Tango of Death is a moving story of friendship, ideals and resilience in the face of the greatest cruelty. It shows that where there are shadows, there is also always light.

In immensely forceful images, Serhij Zhadan shows how familiar surroundings become transformed into a frightening territory. A young teacher wants...

In immensely forceful images, Serhij Zhadan shows how familiar surroundings become transformed into a frightening territory. A young teacher wants to bring his 13-year-old nephew home from the boarding school on the other side of the city. The school, where his working sister has "parked" her son, has come under fire and is no longer safe. It  takes a whole day for him to cross this place where civilian life has collapsed. The way home becomes an ordeal. The two of them end up close to the fighting, though they can see no more than a milky fog in which yellow fires keep flaring. Machine guns rattle and mines explode more frequently than the day before. In the ruins they see paramilitary squads emerging, ownerless dogs, and apathetic people stumbling without orientation through an apocalyptic urban landscape.

A blisteringly hot July in the eastern Ukrainian town of Makiyivka; and a house that’s full of stories: On the...

A blisteringly hot July in the eastern Ukrainian town of Makiyivka; and a house that’s full of stories: On the first floor are the crazy party-girl Vira and her bodyguards, armed with shotguns and vodka, celebrate apocalyptic carousals. A few doors down, two business people, bent on expansion, are planning to take over the region's fruit and vegetable market. Two floors up live Olga, who thinks she's a descendant of French royalty, and Firman, who wants to topple all the city's monuments to Lenin. Then there is the young man from the notorious BERKUT special unit, who falls in love with a demonstrator during an operation. And what's the story behind the creepy apartment that's supposed to be haunted? With colourful and virtuoso language and a fine sense of the tragi-comic and the absurdities of human existence, the young Ukrainian writer creates an electrifying atmosphere in which everything seems possible.

Unsparingly and courageously, Oksana Sabushko, Ukraine’s most exciting writer, addresses the social conditions in her country. Daryna is a television...

Unsparingly and courageously, Oksana Sabushko, Ukraine’s most exciting writer, addresses the social conditions in her country. Daryna is a television producer in Kyiv. One day she finds a photograph of Helzja, a partisan and member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the 1940s, and decides to trace her story. When, in the course of her research, she falls in love with Helzja's grandson Adrian, she is already in the thick of the action. 

The bear wants to know what winter is like. Hibernation? No way! When the little forest spirits come to take...

The bear wants to know what winter is like. Hibernation? No way! When the little forest spirits come to take him to bed, he fights back with all his paws. But the yawning winter tiredness overcomes him in the end. The bison, on the other hand, would far rather sleep through the cold season. So he complains bitterly until the forest spirits build him a cosy bed. Too bad that a bison doesn't hibernate at all! A wonderful picture book about falling asleep.