Interviewed by Iryna Verano
“It took me a long time to question my own caste identity. Sometimes consciousness works that way too. An ultra-liberal approach argues that we fail to see caste because we oppose it. But that, too, is problematic, and over the years, I have learned to see it, accept it, feel the embarrassment of it, and then work from that place of recognition, which I find healthier than the previous approach, which was uninformed.”
fiction
by Richard Pupala
Translated from Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood
The faces around Soňa, the curious ones as well as those who were shocked, gradually turned expressionless as if something had switched them off, all but one that remained unforgivingly distinct. She had to flee from Peter’s gaze into the only arms that remained for her.
By Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
Translated from the Italian by Clara Hillis
Scarlette would go to sea. She was a towering and statuesque person, with steadfast legs, wearing tall boots and a black raincoat. Even during the war, after we evacuated, when the estuary would just erupt fountains of sulfur. Steaming geysers would spray into the sky, and she would go to sea. Even when the city caught all ablaze and was devoured by a white heat. Ashes everywhere: an opaque veil against the sun covered the trees, the houses, and every single rowboat.
by Bianca Bellová
Translated from Czech by the author
It’s an interesting thing, you know: since the border’s been open, the deer still won’t cross over into Germany. They couldn’t when it was divided by the Iron Curtain, there used to be a live wire fence which would always shoot flares whenever anyone touched it. The deer learn territoriality from their mothers, right, they memorize where they lead them and so the Czech deer still walk on Czech paths and the German deer on the German paths.
by Kateryna Zarembo
Translated from Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan
Here, everything seemed unchanged—calm and quiet, as if worries, haste, and war were nonexistent. All you had to do was overlook the remnants of the burned down house across from theirs and the furniture marked by debris, not to mention the occasional air raid alerts on the phone. It was her citadel where nothing was scary.
by Marek Šindelka
Translated from Czech by Graeme Dibble
At this point, words were still too heavy a weapon for the boy. But one day, thought Petr, one day he will accomplish things with them. He’ll use them like a picklock to break into the world of various girls and women, make money using words, weave them together into a huge nest of prestige. He might go far: already you could see he had staying power.
by Khrystia Vengryniuk
Translated from Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan
Lolita went to the windowsill and lit the last candle; the others had already been burning for some time. Peering outside, she noticed the evening settling in. She arched her back with a feline-like stretch, scratching it lightly with her slender, sharp nails. Then she ran her fingers through her straight hair—slightly greasy from rosemary oil—elegantly twisting it into a bun and securing it in place with a hairpin.
By Merey Kossyn
Translated from the Kazakh by Mirgul Kali
She began to molt. The particles of skin separated from the naked body on the prayer mat, floated upward, and scattered in the air. A moment later, in perfect unity, they converged again to form a human body, the body of a girl. Reluctant to leave behind its owner, this skin, this ethereal shell of a body, kept circling the praying girl.
by Max Lawton
The dead of night and flames on either side made it completely impossible to make out anything but fire as such. That and the question of whether there were even that many trees around Santa Barbara to be set alight; I remembered it more as a sort of desert oasis nestled among low hillocks.
by Roman Malynovsky
Translated from the Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan and Yulia Lyubka
Going out into the dark forest, there, in the darkness, in the winter silence, is the most terrifying thing. But I nod at this proposal, and so does Marta, followed by Ilya and the rest. We will go there and do what we fear the most because this is such a moment, and each of us feels it the same way: we are strong and confident we will succeed.
by Kateryna Babkina
Translated from the Ukrainian by Dominique Hoffman
When Dima’s mother called to ask Lesya and the girls to sort through his things, they went over right away. Of course, that was after the funeral was over and she was able to call anyone to say anything at all. Dima’s mother didn’t say much and, for some reason, referred to him exclusively as Staff Sergeant of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade.
poetry
by Natalka Marynchak
Translated from Ukrainian by Lada Kolomiyets
everyone will have their own story
of broken paths and breathlessness
everyone will have their own defended territory
of roaring and laughing
I now have a heart
of reinforced concrete
it knows neither pity
nor comfort
by Dan Sociu
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
I had been in anguish, in anguish, in the light,
from where I had been sent
back into the world, I went into the old dream
where everything was different now though somehow the same
though other
or I was someone else
by Doina Ioanid
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
To be exposed to the harsh air, saturated and heavy with those who came before you. To come into the world as fog takes big bites out of the bark of birch trees and foxes hop around drunk.
by Krista Szöcs
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
they say love will save me from the distances I can’t cross
the distance from here to many meters away measured in footsteps
love will also save me from tiresome fantasies
that inflate my ego and self-confidence
where is my ego and self-confidence?
Letters & Essays
by Yevhenii Monastyrskyi
When we made the decision to leave our homes in the midst of a war zone, each one of us consciously chose to remain within the boundaries of our own nation. This choice necessitated a shift from our local identities to our national ones; perhaps more accurately, it involved allowing our national identities to encompass and overshadow our local ones.
by Ada Wordsworth
As we looked up at the plaque listing the names of the writers who had lived here, an air raid siren sounded around us. The sound intermingled with children’s voices in the playground in Slovo’s yard. Many of the writers whose names are on the plaque outside Slovo have been lost to time—their works are unknown even to the most learned of Ukrainian scholars.
by Alexandra Keeler
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv-born master embroiderer Tetiana Protcheva turned her talents toward guerrilla art activism. Blending ancient Ukrainian folk art with cutting-edge technology, Protcheva creates embroidered QR codes loaded with digital resources detailing Ukrainian culture. “My mission is to go around the world and show people Ukraine through embroidery,” she says.
by Kateryna Iakovlenko
Translated from the Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan
He's nearly thirty, tall, dark-haired, and always smiling. His name is Bohdan, and he was born into a priest's family. He's an artist working with contemporary art, and just a few months ago, you could see his work at the Hanenki Museum, which is located in the former mansion of a sugar beet magnate and collector in the very center of Kyiv. In the military, he goes by the call sign Pillar.
by Juliette Bretan
There was something about placing these artworks together in Cromwell Place – one of those ubiquitous wedding-cake-style townhouses of high Kensington, all whitewashed walls, floor-to-ceiling windows, and clean spotlighting – that made this exhibition, somehow, even stranger; as if each artwork fractures something of reality, or allows a glimpse into another form of it.
by Sofika Zielyk
In a few days, I will go to the cemetery with a basket of Ukrainian Easter eggs. In my culture, it is a tradition to place these eggs, called pysanky, and Easter bread on the graves of departed loved ones so that we can symbolically partake in the Easter feast together. This year, however, will be a little different.
by Victoria Amelina
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan
Since the start of the war, I have developed a cough – it chokes me as soon as I try to say something long and meaningful. Some say it's psychosomatic, while others say it’s because I sleep on the floor. Refugees sleep on the beds and sofas in my Lviv apartment (they say it's better to call them “new neighbors”, and that it's also better to keep quiet about the fact that they are refugees or IDPs).
by Iya Kiva
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan
Time has never felt as heavy as it does now. It's like carrying a gravestone on your shoulders, bending your spine and distorting every step, an unshakeable weight that cannot be thrown off, like those with back problems cannot find comfort, trapped in the torture chamber of their own bodies.
by Kateryna Iakovlenko
There is no place for poetry in war, yet the war has given rise to new forms of poetry. Ruined and abandoned houses, gutted forests, shelled land, and roads scarred by tank tracks began to resemble letters and unwritten sentences. Will someone add to them, cross them out, rewrite them, or throw them away like a crumpled piece of paper?
by Haska Shyyan
Translated from the Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan and Yulia Lyubka
I'm not one to get nostalgic often, so it came as a surprise to me when I was overtaken by an intense and illogical longing to be in Ukraine during those early days of the full-scale invasion; the direness of the situation would likely have resulted in my fleeing to where I already am. I think this desire stemmed from my need to verify the truth of what was happening on my phone screen, which I carefully concealed from my child, pretending to be idly watching something while at work.
interviews
Interviewed by Sonya Bilocerkowycz
“(Ukrainian solidarity) is something that I think people outside of Ukraine struggle to grasp: Why is a Crimean Tatar fighting for Donbas? How is it that a Russophone Ukrainian would rather die fighting than find her- or himself in Russian occupation? Our strength is in unity and it’s this unity against imperial oppression that we’ve been cultivating for generations.”
Interviewed by Anna Gruver
“As a poet, death interests me as intensely and deeply as any other life experience I encounter. In that sense, there are no taboos for me: what can be touched upon and what cannot, what I write about and what I don't.”
Interviewed by Olena Lysenko
“In Bakhmut, people have grown accustomed to sleeping in houses with broken windows, simply covering themselves with a few blankets. These are the harsh realities that currently have no solution. The unfortunate truth of our current reality is that people can become accustomed to living in a war zone.”
Interviewed by Iryna Verano
“It took me a long time to question my own caste identity. Sometimes consciousness works that way too. An ultra-liberal approach argues that we fail to see caste because we oppose it. But that, too, is problematic, and over the years, I have learned to see it, accept it, feel the embarrassment of it, and then work from that place of recognition, which I find healthier than the previous approach, which was uninformed.”
Interviewed by Sandra Joy Russell
“I have a quite banal belief that poetry is born out of something traumatic, something violent that you have to say in a broken language, to mock this violence, to imitate, to make it approachable, to adjust the words to what you’ve gone through. I don’t think poetry is beautiful; not sure what ‘beauty’ is.”
Interviewed by Kate Tsurkan
“I used to find working in the archives uninteresting until I started digging deeper into Mykhaylo Semenko’s life story. You probably know he was a leading figure of Ukrainian Futurist poetry who was shot dead in Kyiv in 1937. The search for documents relating to his life sometimes resembles an investigation.”
Interviewed by Olena Lysenko
“Europeans have already forgotten the reality of war and are very afraid of any form of violence, so they always try to come to an agreement. But it is impossible to peacefully come to an agreement with a nation like Russia. This situation has impacted everyone to a certain extent, and it is no longer possible to say that nothing is happening.”
Interviewed by Paula Erizanu
“My father taught me to read the Latin script before the Cyrillic alphabet. But I wasn't allowed to talk about it at school. But we, the children who read books in Romanian, knew each other. Even if we were not friends, we had a feeling of solidarity with each other.”
Interviewed by Kate Tsurkan
Everyone was in survival mode, going on very little sleep, adrenaline, and trust. I remember giving a $12,000 drone to the driver who was supposed to drive it to the east of the country. He didn’t want to take money from us when we told him it was for the guys on the front lines.
Interviewed by Kate Tsurkan
Ukraine entered my life one day in the hot summer of 1980. I was in the Soviet version of a jeep car with my father—speeding up a dusty road through the fields of God knows where in Kazakhstan—when I first heard him sing ‘Chervona Kalyna’. He wasn’t singing the song too loudly, as if it was reserved for himself and no one else…
book reviews
Reviewed by Anna West
Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press) was published in German in 1996 under the title Verklärte Nacht and was only recently translated from German into English by Anne Posten. It is the last completed novel by a writer of Czech origin who nevertheless identified herself as a German author.
by Elsa Court
As Ivan develops into a state of numbness, Lutsyshyna shows what can happen to the heroes of a revolution when the revolution itself is declared over. He reminisces about his past and experiences no hope for the future, only nostalgia. He becomes emotional at remembering his childhood friends, some of whom have left Uzhhorod and another of whom has died of alcoholism.
Reviewed by John Farndon
The opening words of Hanna Komar’s poetry collection, “wrap around me like ribwort,” grab the reader with courage and tenderness, grief and love, and never let go. Ribwort, a plant revered in Belarus for its potent healing properties in herbal medicine, is a compelling metaphor for the nature of these poems. While rooted in raw honesty and precision, these verses don't shy away from revealing the wounds plaguing the poet and her nation.
by Anthony Hennen
Jaroslav Hašek’s enduring success as a writer, thanks to his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, left him in an unwarranted one-hit wonder conundrum. A raucous satire about a soldier strongarmed into the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, the book has been translated into dozens of languages. It remains in the zeitgeist of European literature.
by Katarina Gephardt
Writing in the 1990s, when many intellectuals were hopeful about the future and ready to leave the past behind, Johanides stressed the continuity between the past and the present, underscoring the continuity of historical evils. However, aspects of the colonel’s and even Ostarok’s characters reflect the writer’s existential hope that individual human choices can alter the course of history.
Reviewed by Anna West
It is the essence of a wandering mind that Dobrakovová captures so aptly. The stories read like confessionals and are told in long train-of-thought clauses separated by commas, with some sentences taking up half the page or more. The stylistic choice helps to pull the reader into the obsessive thoughts of our narrators.
Reviewed by Anna West
Bianca Bellová’s The Lake, translated into English by Alex Zucker, follows Nami as he navigates childhood and young adulthood in a fictitious land made brutal by environmental degradation and Russian occupiers. The Czech author, who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia during the so-called period of normalization in the 1970s, is known for her works that explore themes relating to the communist era.
Reviewed by Sandra Joy Russell
Emerging as part of the visimdesiatnyky (“eightiers”) generation of Ukrainian poets, Bilotserkivets’ developed her poetic voice during the transitional moment of perestroika—the Soviet Union’s attempt at political and economic reform just prior to its collapse in 1991. Much of her writing reflects this increasingly open, and thereby volatile, political moment.
Reviewed by Cory Oldweiler
Oksana is a foreigner; Penelope a local. Both are told the other is a potential threat, but the two women are in fact fighting the same oppressor: a patriarchy that sees women as little more than servants and every bit as inscrutable—and potentially dangerous—as “the barbarians.”
by Maria Genkin
Ukrainians living in the Polish Commonwealth were known at the time as Ruthenians. Suppose you know this and follow a description of Tokarczuk’s characters carefully. In that case, you discover that the Polish Commonwealth was populated not only by Jews and Poles, but by these mysterious others–Ruthenians, who are both commoners (peasants) and gentry.