Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, the non-stop influx of news has exposed how very little so many of us know about the country’s history, culture, and people. To begin to fill those gaps, AuthorPods has decided to create a Ukrainian reading list of its own by Ukrainian novelists.
This short fiction list features books in translation by contemporary Ukrainian authors, along with book jacket blurbs and links for purchase. These works are just a starting point but one way to support the country’s writers while making use of our imagination to better understand a nation under siege.
Reading List:
Voroshilovgrad by Serhiy Zhadan
‘Trainspotting set against a grim post-Soviet backdrop’. — Newsweek
A city-dwelling executive heads home to take over his brother’s gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he finds at home are mysteries and ghosts. The bleak industrial landscape of now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, the Soviet era name of the Ukrainian city of Luhansk, mixing magical realism and exhilarating road novel in poetic, powerful, and expressive prose.
Fieldwork in Ukranian Sex by Oksana Zabuzhko
Called “the most influential Ukrainian book for the 15 years of independence, Field Work in Ukrainian Sex is the tale of one woman’s personal revolt provoked by a top literary scandal of the decade. The author, a noted Ukrainian poet and novelist, explains: “When you turn 30, you inevitably start reconsidering what you have been taught in your formative years―that is, if you really seek for your own voice as a writer. In my case, my personal identity crisis had coincided with the one experienced by my country after the advent of independence. The result turned explosive: Field Work in Ukrainian Sex.”
Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov
49-year-old safety inspector-turned-beekeeper Sergey Sergeich, wants little more than to help his bees collect their pollen in peace. But Sergey lives in Ukraine, where a lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda has been dragging on for years. His simple mission on behalf of his bees leads him through some the hottest spots of the ongoing conflict, putting him in contact with combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers, and Crimean Tatars.
Carbide by Andriy Lyubka
A drunken teacher dreams up a harebrained scheme to dig a tunnel from Ukraine to Hungary to force the EU to grant Ukraine admission by smuggling its entire population into a member country. Hilarity inevitably ensues, along with danger, when Tys, the would-be ‘Moses of Ukraine’, recruits a gang of local smugglers, including a latter-day Icarus determined to fly over the border and a femme fatale who traffics human organs.
The Land of Stone Flowers: A Fairy Guide to the Mythical Human Being by Sveta Dorosheva
Classic fairytales get a refreshing satirical twist in this collection of illustrated stories in which gnomes, pixies, and other fairy folk share tall tales of the strange and unbelievable human world and its inhabitants. Brimming with keen observations and wild assumptions on human anatomy, customs, languages, rituals, dwellings, and more, The Land of Stone Flowers is as absurd as it is astounding, examining contradictory and nonsensical human behaviors through the lens of the fantastic.
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
Victor is depressed: his lover has dumped him, his short stories are too short, and the light has gone off in his dingy apartment. His only companion is Misha, the penguin he rescued from Kiev’s Zoo, when it couldn’t feed the animals anymore. Misha is the silent witness to Victor’s despair, and joins in his celebration—fish and vodka—when Victor’s luck seems to turn: he is commissioned to write obituaries. The weird thing is that the editor wants him to select subjects who are still alive, the movers and the shakers of the new, post-Communist society.
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