From Three Worlds: New Writing from Ukraine (Glass Innactive) (Ukrainian Edition) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0939010526 ISBN 13: 9780939010523

Publisher: Zephyr Press, 2000

Synopsis

A vigorous collection of prose and poetry showcasing the work of fifteen of the former Soviet republic’s best contemporary writers.—Kirkus Reviews

Zephyr Press and Glas copublished From Three Worlds: New Writing from Ukraine, in order to showcase the vibrant literary movement within Ukraine. This anthology represents not only a collection of some of Ukraine's most talented writers, but is also a medium for Ukrainian literature to rewrite the Soviet palimpsest that has sytematically repressed and excluded Ukrainian voices.

"Ukrainian independence (1991), the most important event in the country's history in this century, freed writers enormously. As long as they remained stateless, they were more or less stuck with endlessly shoring up the foundation on which a literature might be built. All earlier attempts over the last hundred years at creating "art for the sake of art" had failed. Now, at last, writers can move beyond their role as missionaries proselytizing on behalf of the Ukrainian language. Today, for the first time, they have a choice. Those who wish to may work in politics, education, or as propagandists, using their gifts for ideological purposes. Others may rally under beauty's banner or, on the contrary, strive to shock with deliberate ugliness."--Solomea Pavlychko

About this title

From the Back Cover

From Three Worlds is a pathbreaking anthology from a long-suppressed culture of Europe, now re-emerging on the world stage. For 350 years prior to independence in 1991, Ukraine endured a subordinate relationship enforced alike by tsars and commissars. As the Soviet Union entered a new (and final) era after 1985, Ukrainian literature shed its underground existence. "It was largely the inner freedom felt by writers and the intelligentsia that led to independence", asserts Solomea Pavlychko in her introduction. From Three Worlds is the first publication in English to witness Ukraine's literary renaissance.

Reviews

Since perestroika, the helpful introduction to this collection tells us, the Ukraine emerged not only from Soviet repression, but from a centuries-old suppression of Ukrainian traditions and language. A signal aspect of this new freedom was the rediscovery of the mother tongue. If anything is "Ukrainian" in the stories and poems of the 16 youthful writers introduced here, it must be the desire to trample limitations. Also common is a raw, vital expression, one of rough edges and provincial awkwardness, evident in Volodymyr Dibrova's recounting of the consequences of mixing testosterone and alcohol at a wedding. Bohdan Zholdak adroitly skewers moral hypocrisy in "Seven Temptations"; Valery Shevchuk and Yuri Vynnychuk start with fairy-tale formats and mold X-rated fables; and Konstiantyn Moskalets portrays a bizarre tragedy both poignant and perverse. More subdued is Yuri Andrukhovych's tale of a returned Afghan fighter, suffocating in abjection. The supernatural as spiritual underpins Oleksander Irvanets's tale of love and suicide, and in Yevhen Pashkovsky's tear-jerker, biblical passages susurrate amidst poverty and inhuman cruelty. Lacking support from a national literary tradition, and compelled to break from things Russian, these Ukrainian writers have moved to uncharted diversity by attraction and rebellion in turn.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zephyr Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: Ukrainian
• ISBN 10: 0939010526
• ISBN 13: 9780939010523
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 282
• Editor: Hogan Ed, Melnyczuk Askold, Naydan Michael