This is readable: the post-apocalypse in Kharkiv, the history of the Ukrainian language, communist agents and other book novelties

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New Year – new books that reveal the multifaceted nature of the world and little-known pages of our glorious history.

UP. Life recommends a new book review made especially for us by a book expert from “Reading” – brilliant non-fiction about the history of Ukraine through the lens of language development, a book about Ukrainian Schindler and the ecological post-apocalypse in Kharkiv.

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Translated prose

Jiří Kratohvil. From a fox to a lady

Kyiv: Komora, 2023. – 176 p.

Who among you missed the good old postmodernism, in which the author’s ears stick out of the text? In the Czech novel “From a fox to a lady”, the author does not forget to remind the readers that he is sitting right here all the time in the next room to the one where the story takes place. That is, this whole story is constructed and has a mediated relationship to reality.

Pavlyk and Sylva are pupils of the state security agencies. Great resources were invested in their education and training, and their teachers were killed immediately after the training was over. Sometimes it’s just in front of these two to teach a lesson and prevent the agents from getting attached to even a living creature. In addition, Sylva is not an ordinary woman, but a fox, transformed into a lady specially on the instructions of Stalin. Needless to say, after its creation, all employees of the Pavlov Institute were liquidated (hello, purges of the intelligentsia!).

This is a novel about totalitarianism and communist rule in Czechoslovakia, about the delivery hand of the Kremlin and the fears of all fugitive emigrants. However, as befits a postmodern work, this novel is full of wit, black humor and is read without dramatic interruption. After all, laughter is an effective defense mechanism, with which to endure the described reality becomes much more bearable. There will be no shortage of masterful literary play in this novel. One of Pavlyk’s teachers, Professor Spender, will end his life as a character in Kafka’s “Process”, which he actually came to the Czech Republic to study. Before his death, the professor will feel amazing joy from the parallelism of his life path with Kafka’s plot.

But why does Mr. Jiří need a masquerade with the transformation of a fox into a woman and vice versa? In addition to the postmodern game with other books, which the author mentions in the novel, other levels can be read here. The novel delves into the topic of the hunt for fugitives from communism, who could be caught by the hand of the Kremlin both in Europe and America. You never know who in front of you is a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a fox with a lady’s face. And behind this reincarnation, the theme of freedom is played out. The further you are from Brno and Prague, the more Sylva’s free foxy nature appears. In addition, at the end, readers will see that one fox in this novel will not do.

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onubia. The son of the family

Kyiv: Anetta Antonenko Publishing House, 2023. – 288 p.

“Son of the Family” is the debut novel of the Nigerian-Canadian writer Chelucha Onyemelukwe-Onubia, which opens the door to the world of female vulnerability and patriarchal norms. This book tells the stories of two Nigerian women who were kidnapped for ransom. While waiting for their fate, the heroines share their own stories, which turn out to be interconnected. Nwabulu and Julie resemble yin and yang: the eternal hunger and poverty of one are in no way connected with golden gifts from the other’s lover. Before us are representatives of two completely different classes. However, class is nothing when it comes to women’s empowerment.

The first story of the novel is about the unloved stepdaughter Nwabula, who fell in love with the son of the rich, but when she became pregnant she found out that Cinderella’s destiny does not shine for her. The only value Nwabulu now has is her son. The heroine is subjected to a bizarre ritual of marriage with a dead boyfriend, because no one alive needs her so “spoiled”. Unlike a newborn boy, which is a value in traditional society

The second story is about Julie, who could not get pregnant and lived under the burden of a promise to her father to trace the continuation of their family. A little cunning, and now she becomes part of a polygamous family and even finds a way to bring a child into her home. But will her deception last long?

“Son of the Kind” is a story of female defenselessness: against sexual violence, exploitation, family pressure and cultural norms. The pagan world of traditional culture and the Christian church alike wash their hands of women when they become uncomfortable. When it is not profitable for the Christian priests, they dissuade Nwabulu from interfering with the marriage ceremony with the deceased. The “civilized world” throws up its hands and maintains a policy of non-intervention. A very familiar situation, isn’t it?

Ukrainian prose

Dmytro Skochko. Rubbish

Kyiv: Vikhola, 2023. – 288 p.

The post-apocalypse is something that Ukrainian authors periodically organize in modern prose. This is how Svitlana Taratorina created a catastrophe in Crimea, turning its inhabitants into mutants in the book “House of Salt”, Taras Antipovich in “Pomyran” turned Donbas into a territory of deadly and barbaric struggle for survival. And Artem Chapai destroyed half the world and left only territories near the water in “Weathering”, where post-apocalyptic life and struggle continues between the inhabitants of Kyiv’s Rusanivka and Trukhanovo Island. And Dmytro Skochka’s new post-apocalyptic novel unfolds around an environmental disaster in Kharkiv.

The 2040s continue. 15 years ago, a large-scale ecological disaster occurred, which turned the city into an eternally gray environment with thousands of rats, the rapid development of all kinds of diseases, as well as a place of lawlessness, black transplantology and other social horrors. Oddly enough, journalism has not yet died out in this world (unlike electricity, which is given only a couple of hours a day). Journalist Lina becomes the heroine of the novel. She is a lonely woman who has to make sure that she is not dismembered on the way home. It’s hard to say who needs Lina’s really interesting investigations in a world without smartphones, but the woman’s boss gives her the task of finding a missing boy named Vlad.

A typical Ukrainian reality: the police will not look for a missing boy, only journalists can deal with such issues. And the motivation for this is not ambition or a fee. But there is no time to wait for detective searches. The girl will listen to the stories of 4 characters related to Vlad, who will tell more about themselves than about the missing boy. But the stories are really interesting. What is the story of a gay man from Horlivka, who fled from a homophobic massacre in his hometown back in 2014, worth?

“Trash” is not so much about the littered post-apocalyptic Kharkiv, but about the fact that a lot can be learned about you from your trash (that is, from your past and your attitude towards it). Somewhere behind these scenes of dark, dirty and dangerous Kharkiv stands the figure of the main European existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, who hints that we are always free to make choices, but that choice rests on us with the burden of responsibility. So sort the garbage and think at least a little about the coming day and your responsibility for what it will be like.

Galina Matveeva. The king’s dream

Lviv: Stary Lev Publishing House, 2023. – 336 p.

“The King’s Dream” is a novel about an ingenious writer’s chessboard, on which it is so easy to get checkmate and checkmate. And this is an apt presentation of the change of eras through household trinkets.

From an early age, Emmanuel dreams of literary immortality. However, instead of creating masterpieces, he had love affairs with most of his fellow philology students in the late 1980s. It is difficult to say which of Emma is the author, but he is definitely a master of not noticing the historical changes around him. It seems that the only thing that prompted him to realize the collapse of the union is the fact that the story he created for the contest was stuck in a magazine that no longer exists in independent Ukraine. From a potential writer, he increasingly falls to the literary bottom. So much so that he no longer understands the literary preferences of the modern age. The hero does not understand his wife, daughter and teaching job much better.

If Emma is a typical failed writer whose worthless life we ​​peek into, then Hans Frisch is his complete opposite. He is a German with family ties to Kharkiv and appears as the embodiment of successful success, the ideal hero-lover and adventurer. First, Frisch comes to the Union to look for his grandfather’s mistress and casually escapes from the KGBist escort. Then Hans goes to write a book in Bosnia during the war and becomes a literary star. Emma keeps coming across references to this German. And it is especially insulting to an unrealized writer for the fact that he once personally knew this same Frisch.

However, in parallel with reading the novel, the question arises: is this reality? And what is this “Union of Forgotten Writers” that suddenly pops up in the middle of the book?

Nonfiction

Orysia Demska. Ukrainian language. Journey from Bad Ems to Strasbourg

Kharkiv: Vivat, 2023. – 304 p.

Usually, non-fiction about the Ukrainian language is a collection of advice on how to speak Ukrainian correctly and how not to. This approach embodies Ukrainians’ fixation on linguistic correctness and, oddly enough, our colonial heritage. However, the book by Orisa Demska, a doctor of philological sciences and organizer of the National Commission for State Language Standards, is something completely different. This is a book about the history of the Ukrainian language, because, as the author writes, Ukraine, like Lithuania, Croatia, Finland and some other countries, is a philological state. We were formed because of a sense of linguistic commonality. So, to know Ukrainian history is to know the history of our language.

This book examines the history of Ukraine through the lens of language. Before us are not the dates of significant battles, but the history of important language events. For example, the formation of Church (or Old) Slavonic as a language of church use. An important point, because in order to become Christians, the Slavs had to understand the language of the liturgy. Or the appearance of the Peresopnytsky Gospel – the first translation of the canonical text into the Old Ukrainian language, which officially recognized it in this way.

The geographical points indicated in the title are points of extreme denial of the language and its extreme recognition. Bad Ems is the place where the Ems Decree was signed, which in the 19th century displaced Ukrainian from the sphere of use. And Strasbourg is the place of official recognition of Ukrainian as a language of the European Union. This book explains well why the national language is important despite the fact that we all do not speak it, but our dialects, koine or slang. She tells how the language of official paperwork and liturgy existed and changed. And why a language is a dialect that has an army.

Yuriy Skira. “Solid”. Shoe factory of life

Lviv: Choven, 2023. – 224 p.

Thanks to Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, we know the story of the German industrialist who managed to save many Jews during the Holocaust. However, at the same time, there was no shortage of Schindlers on the territory of Ukraine. We could learn something about occupied Lviv and the rescue of people there from the brilliant book “Courage and Fear” by historian Ola Hnatiuk. A small investigation by historian Yuriy Skira “Solid” complements this topic, focusing on the history of one Lviv enterprise.

In this book, the author explores the history of one shoe factory, which was located near Rynok Square in Lviv at the current address of 16 Shevska St., and the activities of the monks of the Studio Order, who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Thanks to the students, and in particular Father Josef Peters, Jews worked and hid in the factory. In particular, thanks to the Lviv monks, Kurt Levin and Ada Fink, who survived the Holocaust and left famous memories of this period, were saved.

This story has its own happy ending, because many people were saved. But it is difficult to say that the rescuers’ activities were highly appreciated. In particular, we still don’t have anything on the level of “Schindler’s List” to commemorate these people. On the contrary, during the Soviet years, many monks ended up in prisons and camps, because their activities differed from the policy of the USSR.

Read also: This is readable: fantasy about translators, memoirs of a NASA astronaut, warm Christmas stories and other book novelties

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