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Mondegreen
A mondegreen is something that is heard improperly by someone who then clings to that misinterpretation as fact. Fittingly, Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love explores the ways that memory and language construct our identity, and how we hold on to it no matter what. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region, who has escaped to the capital city of 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. Written in 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. Taking on crucial topics stirred by Russian aggression that began in 2014, the novel stands out for the innovative and probing manner in which it dissects them, while providing a fresh Donbas perspective on Ukrainian identity.
The Length of Days
The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad is set mostly in the composite Donbas city of Z—an uncanny foretelling of what this letter has come to symbolize since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Several embedded narratives attributed to an alcoholic chemist-turned-massage therapist give insight into the funny, ironic, or tragic lives of people who remained in the occupied Donbas after Russia’s initial aggression in 2014. With elements of magical realism, Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel combines a wicked sense of humor with political analysis, philosophy, poetry, and moral interrogation. Witty references to popular culture—Ukrainian and European—underline the international and transnational aspects of Ukrainian literature. The novel ends on the hopeful note that even death cannot have the final word: the resilient inhabitants of Z grow in power through reincarnation.
Mondegreen
A mondegreen is something that is heard improperly by someone who then clings to that misinterpretation as fact. Fittingly, Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love explores the ways that memory and language construct our identity, and how we hold on to it no matter what. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region, who has escaped to the capital city of 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. Written in 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. Taking on crucial topics stirred by Russian aggression that began in 2014, the novel stands out for the innovative and probing manner in which it dissects them, while providing a fresh Donbas perspective on Ukrainian identity.
The Torture Camp on Paradise Street
In The Torture Camp on Paradise Street, Ukrainian journalist and writer Stanislav Aseyev details his experience as a prisoner from 2015 to 2017 in a modern-day concentration camp overseen by the Federal Security Bureau of the Russian Federation (FSB) in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk. This memoir recounts an endless ordeal of psychological and physical abuse, including torture and rape, inflicted upon the author and his fellow inmates over the course of nearly three years of illegal incarceration spent largely in the prison called Izoliatsiia (Isolation). Aseyev also reflects on how a human can survive such atrocities and reenter the world to share his story. Since February 2022, num...
Love Life
Love Life, the second novel by the award-winning Ukrainian writer and poet Oksana Lutsyshyna, follows Yora, an immigrant to the United States from Ukraine. A delicate soul who is finely attuned to the nuances of human relations, Yora becomes enmeshed with Sebastian, a seductive acquaintance who suggests that they share a deep bond. But the relationship ends, sending her into a period of despair and grief. Full of mystic allusions, Love Life is a fascinating story of self-discovery amidst the complexities of adapting to a new life.
A Harvest Truce
In Serhiy Zhadan's tragicomedy A Harvest Truce, brothers Anton and Tolik reunite at their family home to bury their mother. Isolated without power or running water on the front line of a war ignited by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the brothers' best hope for success and survival lies in the declared cease fire--the harvest truce.
The Legacies of Soviet Repression and Displacement
This book explores the ways in which memories of Stalin-era repression and displacement manifest across times and places through diverse forms of materialization. The chapters of the book explore the concrete mobilities of life stories, letters, memoirs, literature, objects, and bodies reflecting Soviet repression and violence across borders of geographical locations, historical periods, and affective landscapes. These spatial, temporal, and psychological shifts are explored further as processes of textual circulation and mediation. By offering novel multi-sited and multi-media analyses of the creative, political, societal, cultural, and intimate implications of remembrance, the collection c...
Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament
Based on original and previously unavailable documents, Yuri Kostenko’s account of the negotiations surrounding the Budapest Memorandum agreement between Ukraine, Russia, and the US reveals for the first time the internal debates of the Ukrainian government, as well as the pressure exerted upon it by its international partners.
Readers for Life
An anthology both personal and profound exploring the deep meaning of reading in our lives. Readers for Life is a collection of essays, mainly specially commissioned for the book, by fiction authors and literary scholars, who reflect on their childhood or adolescent memories of reading. The essays explore how the act of reading shapes an individual, from our formative years into adulthood and beyond. Instead of focusing on reading as an act of escapism, or mere literacy, these writings celebrate reading as a lifelong, joyful experience that intertwines past and present. By revealing our diverse reading histories, the collection fosters awareness of the profound impact of reading on a person’s development and offers readers insights that will enrich their own literary experiences. Featuring an introduction by editors Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhönen, Readers for Life includes essays by Natalya Bekhta, Peter Brooks, Philip Davis, Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Sander L. Gilman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Laura Otis, Laura Oulanne, Heta Pyrhönen, Salman Rushdie, Cristina Sandu, Pajtim Statovci, and Maria Tatar, as well as an interview with Michael Rosen.
Cecil the Lion Had to Die
In Cecil the Lion Had to Die, Olena Stiazhkina follows four families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. A must-read novel for those seeking deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia.
