
A unique work of fiction from the troubled streets of Ukraine, giving invaluable testimony to the new history unfolding in the nation’s post-independence years. This captivating book is Serhiy Zhadan’s ode to Kharkiv, the traditionally Russian-speaking city in Eastern Ukraine where he makes his home. A leader among Ukrainian post‑independence authors, Zhadan employs both prose and poetry to address the disillusionment, complications, and complexities that have marked Ukrainian life in the decades following the Soviet Union’s collapse. His novel provides an extraordinary depiction of the lives of working-class Ukrainians struggling against an implacable fate: the road forward seems blocked at every turn by demagogic forces and remnants of the Russian past. Zhadan’s nine interconnected stories and accompanying poems are set in a city both representative and unusual, and his characters are simultaneously familiar and strange. Following a kind of magical-realist logic, his stories expose the grit and burden of stalled lives, the universal desire for intimacy, and a wistful realization of the off-kilter and even perverse nature of love.
Author

Serhiy Zhadan (23 August 1974 in Starobilsk, Luhansk region, Ukraine) is a contemporary Ukrainian novelist, writer, essayist, poet, translator, musician and public figure. Among his most notable works are novels Depeche Mode (2004, translated into into English in 2013 by Glagoslav Publications), Anarchy in the UKR (2005, translation into English is yet to come), Voroshilovgrad (2010, translated into into English in 2016 by Deep Vellum Publishing) and Orphanage (2017, translation into English forthcoming in 2020 by Yale University Press) as well as collection of short stories and poems Mesopotamia (2014, English translation by Yale University Press in 2018). Please note that this English-language profile is intended for all own literary works of Serhiy Zhadan. For works of other authors translated into Ukrainian from a different language by Zhadan, please add both this profile (as a second author) as well as his Ukrainian-language profile: Сергій Жадан (as a third author)