Vortex: Vasyl Stus’ Selected Early Poetry (Вибірка з творів поза збірками та збірок: Круговерть, Зимові дерева, Веселий цвинтар)
Author: Vasyl Stus
Translators: Bohdan Tokarsky, Nina Murray
Translation: Ukrainian to English
Vortex: Vasyl Stus’ Selected Early Poetry is the first professional book-length volume of Stus’ poetry in English translation. The book features more than a decade of Stus’ work, from his earliest texts to the period before his arrest by the KGB in 1972. A book of bold experimentation and virtuoso poetic versatility, Vortex captures Stus’ artistic evolution and the shifting political landscape of the USSR during a crucial period of the 1960s and early 1970s, juxtaposing existentialism and love lyric, expressionist metaphors and Ukrainian history, metaphysical depth, and the powerful energy of dissent.
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The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide: The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (Українська інтелігенція і геноцид: боротьба за історію, мову і культуру в 1920-1930-х роках)
Author: Viktoria A. Malko
Translator: Viktoria A. Malko
Translation: English to Ukrainian
Viktoria Malko examines the existential threats and ideological choices the Ukrainian intelligentsia faced as the first group targeted during the Holodomor genocide. Due to its influential patriotism and its leadership of Ukraine’s strong tradition of struggle for national liberation, the “brain of the nation”—the intelligentsia —became the epicentre of the Soviet-orchestrated genocide against Ukrainians. The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide is an illuminating study of a decade that traumatised Ukraine as a nation and has shaped its politics to this very day, written by a historian specializing in Modern Europe and World History.
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Ukraine, the Middle East, and the West
(Україна, Середній Схід і Захід)
Author: Thomas Prymak
Translator: Nadia Zavorotna
Translation: English to Ukrainian
This fascinating and fluidly written book is unique in that it is the first scholarly monograph to treat Ukraine’s relations to the world outside eastern Europe. Thomas Prymak addresses geographical knowledge, international travel, political conflicts, historical relations with religiously diverse neighbours, artistic developments, and literary and language contacts to smash old stereotypes about Ukrainian isolation and tell a vivid and original story. The volume gives substance to Ukraine’s claim to an independent existence across the centuries and puts Ukraine on the map of the world, for historians, art museums, cultural institutions generally, and for the wider public.
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Solomea: Star of Opera’s Golden Age
(Соломія: Зірка Золотої доби опери)
Author: Andriy Semotiuk
Translators: Halyna Stashkiw
Translation: English to Ukrainian
Solomea Krushelnytska was Ukraine’s greatest opera star and a leading lyric-dramatic soprano in the Golden Age of opera in the first decade of the 1900s. Known as the soprano who “rescued” Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, her legacy is revered in Ukraine and her life is only now coming to light in Europe and North America. The English-language book, released in 2022, is the most authoritative biographical work on Krushelnytska and, with this translation, her life story will be available to the Ukrainian-speaking world.
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The Shore of Expectations: A Cultural Study of the Shistdesiatnyky (Берег чекань: культурологічне дослідження шістдесятників)
Author: Simone Attilio Bellezza
Translator: Marharyta Yehorchenko
Translation: English to Ukrainian
Simone Bellezza reconstructs the history of the shistdesiatnyky—the generation of Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals (artists, writers, scientists) who spearheaded the renaissance of Ukrainian national culture in the 1960s. Bellezza’s analysis begins with the awakening of artistic and literary expression during the so-called Soviet Thaw and describes the complex relationship that this young cultural elite had with the Soviet authorities until the mass arrests and repressions of intellectuals in January 1972. The Shore of Expectations was awarded the 2020 Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian Studies.
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The Mobilized (Мобілізяка)
Author: Vlad Yakushev
Translator: Fr Jeffrey D. Stephaniuk
Translation: Ukrainian to English
Vlad Yakushev has proven the success of his writing not only by the number of book sales in Ukraine, but also by his prescient and patriotic first-hand involvement in the events he describes. He defended Ukraine in the years before Russia’s full-scale war, and he continues to fight since 2022. His work is important for its public record of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion and for the accessibility of its content: as a citizen soldier, Yakushev knows how to frame the war in prose relatable to both civilians and the soldiers about whom he writes. In Mobiliziaka (The Mobilized), the author describes his direct involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war and answers many questions on the experiences of war not dealt with in his previous works.
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Dr. Leonardo’s Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with his Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta (Подорож ученого доктора Леонардо і його майбутньої коханки прекрасної Альчести у Слобожанську Швайцарію)
Author: Maik Yohansen
Translator: Uilleam Blacker
Translation: Ukrainian to English
Italian doctor Leonardo Pazzi and Alcesta, his “future lover,” travel through the picturesque, hilly region of Sloboda, near Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, and experience a series of encounters with local Ukrainians and nature itself, with disappearances and transformations that are filled with paradoxes and unmotivated twists. This contemporary English translation of Maik Yohansen’s novel is ideal for readers interested in discovering the richness of Ukrainian modernism. In 1937, in a wave of Stalinist purges of Ukraine’s intelligentsia, the author was executed at age 42 in the NKVD’s Lukyanivka Prison in Kyiv. Yohansen’s book was added to PEN-Ukraine’s list of 100 Notable Books.
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Dom’s Dream Kingdom (Дім для Дома)
Author: Victoria Amelina
Translator: Grace Mahoney
Translation: Ukrainian to English
Victoria Amelina’s award-wining novel, Dom’s Dream Kingdom, prods the complexities of Ukraine’s transition to independence after the Soviet collapse. Following members of the Tsilyk family, who settle in Lviv in the 1990s, the novel unearths their multigenerational ties from Baku to Berlin, while considering the forgotten lives that once inhabited the family’s new apartment. The result is an incisive challenge to the barriers facing Ukraine’s collective memory. Amelina won the Joseph Conrad Literary Award in 2021 and her book was shortlisted for several awards including the European Union Prize for Literature. The author and war-crimes researcher died tragically at age 37 in July 2023 after a Russian missile struck a popular restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk, killing and wounding over 60 people.
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La dernière volonté du bourreau (Останнє бажання)
Author: Eugenia Kononenko
Translators: Rostyslav Nyemtsev, Felicia Mihali
Translation: Ukrainian to French
Eugenia Kononenko’s book masterfully helps the reader travel through the past. Ivan Ivak, the main character of this novel, is both a former writer in the Soviet Union and a KGB employee who puts people to death. After the collapse of communism, he dies under unexplained circumstances, leaving behind a body of second-rate literary work that no one reads. Years later, his children come across а manuscript that reveals the other side of their father. Before his death, their father committed his only act of courage and literary honesty by revealing the truth about his past and changing the lives of future generations.
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Darlings of Justice (Коханці юстиції)
Author: Yuri Andrukhovych
Translator: Vitaly Chernetsky
Translation: Ukrainian to English
Darlings of Justice is the sixth novel by Yuri Andrukhovych, a leading contemporary Ukrainian author. Subtitled “a parahistorical novel in eight and a half episodes,” the book marked Andrukhovych’s long-awaited return to plot-driven narrative prose from works in a more essayistic mode. The entire novel is closely linked to Ukraine. As a result, it can be read as a powerful meditation on the puzzles and paradoxes of Ukrainian history, the eternal return of a certain set of complexes and traumas experienced by different generations of Ukrainians, and an exploration of their hopes, dreams, and daring feats. Darlings of Justice won the prestigious “BBC Book of the Year” award in 2018.
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