(Glas, No 12) 

edited by Ed Hogan, Askold Melnyczuk, Michael Naydan

Book Description: Since perestroika, the helpful introduction to this collection tells us, the Ukraine emerged not only from Soviet repression, but from a centuries-old suppression of Ukrainian traditions and language. A signal aspect of this new freedom was the rediscovery of the mother tongue. If anything is "Ukrainian" in the stories and poems of the 16 youthful writers introduced here, it must be the desire to trample limitations. Also common is a raw, vital expression, one of rough edges and provincial awkwardness, evident in Volodymyr Dibrova's recounting of the consequences of mixing testosterone and alcohol at a wedding. Bohdan Zholdak adroitly skewers moral hypocrisy in "Seven Temptations"; Valery Shevchuk and Yuri Vynnychuk start with fairy-tale formats and mold X-rated fables; and Konstiantyn Moskalets portrays a bizarre tragedy both poignant and perverse. More subdued is Yuri Andrukhovych's tale of a returned Afghan fighter, suffocating in abjection. The supernatural as spiritual underpins Oleksander Irvanets's tale of love and suicide, and in Yevhen Pashkovsky's tear-jerker, biblical passages susurrate amidst poverty and inhuman cruelty. Lacking support from a national literary tradition, and compelled to break from things Russian, these Ukrainian writers have moved to uncharted diversity by attraction and rebellion in turn. (Publisher's Weekly review)

Recommendation: This book was recommended to me by frequent Orange Ukraine reader and commenter IIU. From the Ukrainian Weekly Review: "Paves the way for future publications in the overlooked field of contemporary Ukrainian literature - a field rich with talented writers and volumes of excellent writings awaiting publication. The difficult task of selecting 15 writers from this pool and assembling them, in translation, in one book is a truly commendable feat."

by Askold Melnyczuk

Author Information: director of creative writing at University of Massachusetts-Boston since Fall 2002. His second novel, Ambassador of the Dead, published in May 2001 by Counterpoint, has been called “exquisite, original” by The Washington Post. His first, What Is Told (Faber and Faber) was a New York Times Notable Book for 1994.

In 1997 he received a Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Award in Fiction. Winner of the McGinnis Award in Fiction, he has also been awarded grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. He has published stories, poems, translations, and reviews in The New York Times, The Nation, Partisan Review, Grand Street, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Boston Globe. His poems have been included in various anthologies including The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry, Literature: The Evolving Canon, and Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets. He is the series editor for Take Three: The New Poets Annual from Graywolf Press and was coeditor for From Three Worlds: An Anthology of Ukrainian Literature.

Book Description: This tale of Ukrainian immigrants' attempts at adjustment to life in America has a dreamy affect, but its undercurrent of emotional honesty gives it bite. Nick, a Boston doctor, is drawn back to his hometown of Elizabeth, N.J., by the news that his childhood friend Alex is in trouble although he does not yet know what kind of trouble. He finds first that Alex's mother, Ada, once vibrant and attractive, is now embittered, lonely and nearly blind.

Nick reminisces about his past, focusing on memories of his friend for most of the book. As a child, Alex was mischievous, but eventually became more and more wild, due in part to his father's abuse and subsequent abandonment. Throughout the novel he is agitated by society and by his own psyche, gradually losing his sanity.

Melnyczuk (What Is Told) writes exceedingly well-controlled miniature narratives that begin as soft-focus reveries and develop into darker tales that confidently clinch the attention and release it just as smoothly. One of Alex's mother's early lovers seems gentle during their initial courtship, then expresses sadomasochistic desires; she pursues another failed romance with an emigre poet. Even the story of the narrator's marriage is laced with strife: his wife confesses that she had rejected his earliest advances because he was Ukrainian and she was Jewish. The book drifts in a Proustian fashion, vividly portraying the difficulties of cultural assimilation until the jarring conclusion. Recollections that might have fizzled in another author's hands here grow luminous and haunting.

Recommendation: This book was recommended to me by frequent Orange Ukraine reader and commenter IIU. The NYT highly praised this book, though Robert A. Papinchak in the Journal Sentinel review thinks it "succumbs to its own self-interests".

Book Links

Full Bio at AGNI

Journal Sentinel Review on FindArticles.com
Great NYT Review
Powell's
Amazon

by Orson Scott Card

Author Information: Orson Scott Card has won a ridiculous number of awards for sci-fi and fantasy: four Hugos, two Nebulas, and a World Fantasy Award. His best known work is Ender's Game, a book I highly recommend.

Book Description: Enchantment is a complex blend of traditional fairy tale motifs, beginning with a version of "Sleeping Beauty."  Card places his comatose princess in the Ukrainian woods where she is found in the mid 1970s by ten-year-old Ivan Smetski, just as his parents are given permission to emigrate to Israel.  Ivan returns in the 1990s as a Ph.D. student researching his dissertation in Folklore and is again drawn to the glade where this vision, which has haunted him since he left the Soviet Union, began.   At this point, Card introduces a wide variety of Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish folktales, blending their disparate threads into a intricate, but seemless story.

...

One of Card's strengths in Enchantment is not the deft characterization or the flowing plot, although those are both notable, but his ability to portray the cultures of early Christian Ukraine and late-twentieth century society so differently while understanding (and showing the reader) how ingrained their beliefs are.  Things which seem silly to Katarina are extremely serious offenses to Ivan and vice versa. (read the rest of the description at SFSite)

Recommendation: There seems to be some of the usual mixing of Ukraine and Russia, including by Card himself, sad to say. However, the book comes recommended by Orange Ukraine reader R. Smith: "An enjoyable read, and it takes place mainly in Ukraine--ancient and modern. Baba Yaga probably should have stayed out in Siberia, but I give it a thumbs up nonetheless."

Book Links

Interview with Orson Scott Card
Card's Website
Powell's
Amazon

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Author Information: Jonathan Safran Foer was one of Rolling Stone’s “People of the Year” and Esquire’s “Best and Brightest.” Foreign rights to his new novel have already been sold in ten countries. The film of Everything Is Illuminated, directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood, will be released in August 2005. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been optioned for film by Scott Rudin Productions in conjunction with Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures. Foer lives in Brooklyn, New York. (Hughton Mifflin bio)

Book Recognition: Bestseller. Named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. Made into a movie.

Book Description: In the summer after his junior year of college, Jonathan Safran Foer journeyed to Ukraine with a faded photograph, hoping to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He intended to write a non-fictional account of his experiences, but he returned home deeply disappointed, having found next to nothing. Unfortunately, while the struggle to find something, anything, on his family was both moving and remarkably well-written, he filled in the remaining empty space with an incoherent modern fable.

Dan's Tepid Recommendation: As you might have guessed, the last sentence in the description is mine. To be honest, your best bet would be to read all the sections that actually involve his search for the woman who saved his grandfather, and skip all the "Jewish fairy tale" sections. The book is still worth it just for the heartrending search, but trust me, avoid the fairy tale; one would have to be a serious "literary fiction" snob to pretend to like reading that nonsense.

Book Links

by Marina Lewycka

Author Information: Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. She is married, with a grown-up daughter, and lives in Sheffield. (Penguin bio)

In addition to his work at RL, Nahaylo is an established writer on Soviet and Ukrainian issues, contributing articles to the London Spectator, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and many other publications. (source)

Book Description: Focused on the events in the latter period of the Soviet Union leading up to independence. Some discussion of the early postwar period as well.

Recommendation: This book was recommended to me by Neeka of Neeka's Backlog. 

Book Links

Neeka's Review
Lewycka's Journey around Ukraine
Powell's
Amazon