The Ones Who Survive Are Real — a Review of Bora Chung’s ‘Red Sword’
Book Review Kate Tsurkan Book Review Kate Tsurkan

The Ones Who Survive Are Real — a Review of Bora Chung’s ‘Red Sword’

Reviewed by Kate Tsurkan

Bora Chung’s “Red Sword” wastes no time plunging readers into an alien world that is both cruel and enticing, immediately challenging humanity to find a way to reclaim itself. We are first introduced to the narrator — a woman who remains nameless for most of the novel — as she recounts her budding intimacy with a lover aboard a slave ship traversing the far reaches of a galactic empire, only to witness his death shortly after they are cast onto what is dubbed the white planet. What starts as a flicker of dread from her lover’s untimely death swiftly grows into an unrelenting tension that saturates the novel from start to finish.

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When the Air Held Its Breath — on the Poetic Record of War in Oksana Maksymchuk’s ‘Still City’
Book Review Kate Tsurkan Book Review Kate Tsurkan

When the Air Held Its Breath — on the Poetic Record of War in Oksana Maksymchuk’s ‘Still City’

Reviewed by Anya Avrutsky

Written in the few months leading up to and following Russia’s full-scale invasion, the book bridges a documentary and surrealist style, capturing a city on the brink. Maksymchuk, a Ukrainian poet and translator from Lviv, began writing Still City six months before February 24th, from a building overlooking an old prison courtyard where political prisoners had been executed during WWII. Such a setting serves as a reminder of how little time has passed since the last war that ravaged Ukraine.

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Between Nostalgia and Uncertainty: A Review of Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press)
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Between Nostalgia and Uncertainty: A Review of Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press)

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.

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When the Revolution’s Over: A Review of Ivan and Phoebe (2023, Deep Vellum)
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When the Revolution’s Over: A Review of Ivan and Phoebe (2023, Deep Vellum)

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.

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Courage and tenderness: A review of Ribwort by Hanna Komar (2023, 3TimesRebel Press)
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Courage and tenderness: A review of Ribwort by Hanna Komar (2023, 3TimesRebel Press)

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.

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Beyond Švejk: Jaroslav Hašek’s serious comedic tales
Book Review Kate Tsurkan Book Review Kate Tsurkan

Beyond Švejk: Jaroslav Hašek’s serious comedic tales

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.

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Convoluted Truths about Persistent Evils: A Review of Ján Johanides’s But Crime Does Punish (2022, Karolinum Press)
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Convoluted Truths about Persistent Evils: A Review of Ján Johanides’s But Crime Does Punish (2022, Karolinum Press)

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.

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Disparate and Distressed Dames: A Review of Ivana Dobrakovová’s Mothers and Truckers (2022, Jantar Publishing)
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Disparate and Distressed Dames: A Review of Ivana Dobrakovová’s Mothers and Truckers (2022, Jantar Publishing)

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.

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A Review of Bianca Bellová’s The Lake (2022, Parthian Books)
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A Review of Bianca Bellová’s The Lake (2022, Parthian Books)

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.

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A Review of Natalka Bilotserkivets’ Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow (2021, Lost Horse Press)
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A Review of Natalka Bilotserkivets’ Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow (2021, Lost Horse Press)

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.

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Reading The Books of Jacob As A Ukrainian
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Reading The Books of Jacob As A Ukrainian

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.

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The Conflicting Life of Dmytro Dontsov: A Review of Trevor Erlacher’s Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes ( 2021, Harvard University Press)
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The Conflicting Life of Dmytro Dontsov: A Review of Trevor Erlacher’s Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes ( 2021, Harvard University Press)

Reviewed by Maria Genkin

Dontsov’s version of Marxism was always a bit heretical, but he came to view the Russian interpretation of it as imperialistic, and all Russians, in turn, as imperialists, regardless of their professed political values. His interpretation of Marxism, notes Erlacher, contained the seeds of its own destructive fascism.

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