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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